Comradely Combat

One of Lyndon Johnson's favorite anecdotes concerns the Texas judge who is informed by a friend that a legislative committee has voted to abolish his bench. "Who testified against me?" demands the judge. "Well," says his friend, "there was Banker Jones." "He's usurious," snaps the magistrate. "He cheats little ol' ladies out of their life savings. Who else?" The acquaintance lists all the other witnesses, and with growing rage the judge denounces each as a scoundrel or worse. Finally the friend confesses that he has been kidding, that the committee in fact has rejected the bill. "Now why," sighs the judge, "did you go and make me say those things about the finest group of men I know?"

The story is a distillation of Texan political mores, which permit the closest of friends to castigate one another on the hustings and get drunk together when the votes are in. Though Governor John Bowden Connally Jr. considers Lyndon Baines Johnson his finest friend, he has leveled bitter criticism at the Johnson Administration of late. Connally's blasts began last month when the Justice Department ordered FBI agents to monitor a special 15-day voter registration period that followed the abolition of Texas' poll tax. Last week the state won a court fight against a U.S. attempt to extend registration as late as October, and Connally accused the Administration of "either frivolous harassment or an attempt to take over the authority of the state government."

Hitching Waggoner. Despite press reports of a "split" between Johnson and Connally, Texas politicians--not least, the President--understand that the crossfire is routine politics. Connally, who is up for a third term, is anxious to demonstrate that he and State Attorney General Waggoner Carr, his hand-picked candidate for the U.S. Senate against Republican Incumbent John Tower, are not Washington-controlled puppets. In the process he aims also to galvanize conservative support against the liberal faction that hopes to seize control of the party at the forthcoming state Democratic convention. While critical of the President's domestic spending policies, the Governor carefully ascribes them to "bad advice from the Eastern Establishment," and has thunderously endorsed Johnson's stand in Viet Nam.

Johnson and Connally have had their fights before; in 1948, even while supporting Johnson's first successful U.S. Senate bid, Connally was not on speaking terms with his friend for the last two weeks of the campaign. But they have remained intimates and allies for three decades. A few weeks ago, the Governor visited the President in Washington and presumably briefed him on the horrible things he plans to say about the Administration during this year's Texas campaign. Few doubt that at the 1968 Democratic National Convention Connally will control the Texas delegation--and deliver it to L.B.J. Said the Governor last week: "I'm for him now.

I'll be for him in '68, and I'll be for him in '72 if we're still around."

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