AFTERTHOUGHT
Go said the Bird
JOHN WELLS
President Johnson had not intended to ex- pose himself on television last Saturday night. This shocking disclosure, and an in- dication of the role that his wife, Lady Bird, played in bringing about such an extraordinary act of self-revelation, are con- 'Mined in this exclusive interview between President Johnson and Professor Willi Krankheit, the ex-President's psychiatrist.
KRANKHEIT: Mr President, the last few days of the 'sixties have been nostalgic ones in- deed for us all, but your statement on tele- vision on 27 December to the effect that you never really believed you were the man to handle the job of President of the United States must have kindled in many hearts a still warmer nostalgia for the dear dead days of the credibility gap . . . do you now regret that statement?
JOHNSON: I don't think so. There is some disappointment that the results that I would hope would flow from it—offers of canon- isation from Pope Montini, a nationwide re- sponse to my new fat reliable look and silver rinse culminating in a massive demand that I should undertake another term in 1972—a demand that I should of course refuse—have yet to come, but I am still hopeful.
KRANKHEIT: How are you enjoying your new role as the humble penitent, the self- confessed henpecked failure?
JOHNSON: Really, it's great. I'm taking it
pretty easy now, sackcloth suit and a cinder friction down at the barbershop twice a week, but I'm working on it. Lady Bird's fitted me up a fully mechanised auto- flagellation unit in the garage and there's some talk of walking up the steps of the White House on my knees . . . my press agent's dealing with it.
KRANKHEIT: You mention the White House. Isn't there anything you miss about not being a successful ex-President of the United States? Didn't you enjoy, the position?
JOHNSON: Listen, of course I miss it. I miss it like I miss a lapful of horseshit. [Texan expression meaning `I am relieved that I am no longer in such a position'.] The greatest moment in my life was sitting there in that television studio and seeing that red light go off and knowing that I was a nice old un- pretentious slow-talking discredited cow- poke [a farmer].
Then I no longer had the fear that I was the man who might make the mistake of involving this great country in the un- seemly turmoil of another presidential elec- tion. Who knows, if I were to undertake another term—which is of course out of the question—that I might be the man who might unleash the horrors of some of our great power on the North Vietnamese, or in the Middle East. As it was, I could walk out of that studio being concerned about what happened to someone like Hubert Humphrey, being alarmed at what happened to him, but really knowing that I wasn't going to be the cause of it.
I said to someone the other day that one of the things I enjoyed most was to be able to spend the evening in front of the television set watching the news and old films and comedy shows and all the other crap they have on. The real horror of those months when I was a successful ex-President was to be sleeping soundly in front of the television at eight or eight-thirty or nine in the evening and have the telephone ring and the operator say, 'Sorry to wake you, Mr President'. There is just a few seconds be- tween the time the operator got me on the line until she got Mr Rostow or Secretary Rusk and Mr Bundy or Secretary McNam- ara or Mr Gore Vidal and I went through the horrors of hell in those few seconds. Were we going to be invited out to dinner? Had someone made a mistake? Was it an invitation to lunch? Well, those experiences are gone. You say, don't you miss them? Sure I miss them, but I really never did want those calls to begin with. I would like to have missed them when I was there. KRANKHEIT: I don't suppose anyone ever wakens a successful ex-President with a gag or just for a chew of the fat?
JOHNSON: Not at eight-thirty in the evening they don't.
KRANKHEIT: Was it a sudden decision—to confess your complete failure on 27 Decem- ber? When did you really cast the die in your own mind?
JOHNSON: I'll tell you this now, Professor Krankheit, I never did intend to make any such decision. After I'd been buffaloed in and out of the presidency by Lady Bird for getting on five years—do this, do that, where are you going, where have you been, show the men your operation scar, napalm the yellerbellies—honestly, Professor Krankheit, I was feeling pretty sick. I fully intended to spend my retirement as a successful ex- President, a widely respected Texan farmer with no political ambitions. Who knows, maybe I would have been asked out to din- ner just now and then. But that wasn't good enough for Lady Bird. On the evening of 26 December Mrs Johnson read me this statement: 'Hear this you big baboon'—and I knew from the way she started off that I wasn't going to like it—`your friends, the few that you still have, are frozen into posi- tions of silent embarrassment. All I can see for the future is an expanding waistline. Your reputation stinks. Get out there and do a whitewash job on yourself or I'll kick your spine through the top of your head. Bird.' On the twenty-seventh, Professor Krankheit, I appeared on television.
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