Nov. 2, 1964 - President Johnson came back to his home state today to await the results of the election. He told his hill country neighbors that it seemed “I have spent my life getting ready for this moment.”
The President traveled from Washington to Houston for three speeches this afternoon and then came to Austin to speak from the steps of the State Capitol. Austin gave him a hero's welcome. The crowds were so thick on broad Congress Avenue approaching the Capitol that his car could barely move, and the President happily hung from the open automobile to shake hands with “the folks.”
But to say that Mr. Johnson campaigned was less than accurate. The campaign was over, and Mr. Johnson spoke primarily of his hopes and plans if the nation's voters tomorrow give him a full term of his own.
In a final television appearance tonight, Mr. Johnson told Republicans that the health of the two‐party system would be restored by “an overwhelming repudiation of the small minority which has seized the Republican party and is already planning to keep it.” He said that “only a massive defeat” could drive conservative Goldwater followers “from their places of present power.”
Mr. Johnson also said that his opponent was against the major social and economic legislation since the New Deal and called this “an intention to shatter the tested foundation of our economy” that would “bring disaster.”
In the pretaped television program, broadcast by NBC, the President also said:
“We are told that tactical nuclear weapons are simply a new kind of conventional explosive.”
A President, Mr. Johnson said, holds in his hands “the power which can lay waste in hours a civilization that it took a thousand years to build.”
The 56‐year‐old President has seemed quietly confident for weeks, and his interest appears to be less on victory than on the quality of victory. In recent days he has called for a “loud and clear” mandate — a landslide — that would still the voices of Goldwater conservatism and “bind up our wounds.”
“It is characteristic of him to win elections before the campaign even begins,” a trusted friend said recently.
This accurately reflects the White House view that a record of accomplishment, especially of legislation guided through Congress, has been more important than oratory.
Mr. Johnson may have been preparing all his life for the Presidency, but he is a man who probably never could have been nominated or elected in other circumstances.
The disadvantages of being a Southerner, of his heart attack in 1955 and of carrying the reputation with big‐city Democrats of being conservative were bypassed when he made the fateful decision to accept the Vice‐Presidential nomination from John F. Kennedy in 1960. He became President on the day of Mr. Kennedy’s assassination last Nov. 22.
Now, if polls can be believed, the man who was unacceptable in 1960 is about to lead his party to one of its largest victories.
In Austin tonight, the President recalled his trip to Texas with President Kennedy nearly a year ago. He quoted from the speech that Mr. Kennedy intended to give in Austin the night of Nov. 22:
“Neither the fanatics nor the faint‐hearted are needed, and our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the nation . . . so let us not be petty when our cause is so great.”
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