From Washington Straight

Lyndon and the South

For the past ten days, Lyndon Johnson has devoted his considerable energies to the political reclamation of the South. The once-solid South, the South that backed Lyndon Johnson as Vice President in 1960, has been split wide open by the astonishingly powerful challenge of Sen. Barry Goldwater. The labored dispute between the Mississippi Freedom Party and the regular Democratic organization over that state’s 24 convention votes is symptomatic of the problems which now beset LBJ and to which no universally acceptable solution can be found. LBJ was backed into a corner on the question of seating Mississippi and on the question of the loyalty oath futilely demanded of Alabama. He was asked by the North, on one hand, to ratify his newly-acquired Liberalism and, on the other, to reconfirm his cautionary constitutionalism by the South. He could not, obviously, oblige on both counts. What emerged from the credentials dispute is the certainty that LBJ—if not publicly, at Convention City—will have to seek an accommodation with the Old South as one of his top political priorities.

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Barry Goldwater

Presidential Election

Lyndon and the South

For the past ten days, Lyndon Johnson has devoted his considerable energies to the political reclamation of the South. The once-solid South, the South that backed Lyndon Johnson as Vice President in 1960, has been split wide open by the astonishingly powerful challenge of Sen. Barry Goldwater. The labored dispute between the Mississippi Freedom Party and the regular Democratic organization over that state’s 24 convention votes is symptomatic of the problems which now beset LBJ and to which no universally acceptable solution can be found. LBJ was backed into a corner on the question of seating Mississippi and on the question of the loyalty oath futilely demanded of Alabama. He was asked by the North, on one hand, to ratify his newly-acquired Liberalism and, on the other, to reconfirm his cautionary constitutionalism by the South. He could not, obviously, oblige on both counts. What emerged from the credentials dispute is the certainty that LBJ—if not publicly, at Convention City—will have to seek an accommodation with the Old South as one of his top political priorities.