"Thank you very much for this introduction and this welcome. I felt that it would not be right for me to leave Washington without coming here to my old club that I have been visiting since the days of George Stimson's and Bascom Timmons' presidency. [Presidents of the National Press Club during the 1930's.]

As I went to the Congress for two reasons, to tell them how I felt and for sentimental reasons, I come to the Press Club today largely for the identical reasons.

I also wanted to be sure that I acknowledged the close and the frank relationship that we have always enjoyed. You were always frank and I was close. [Laughter]

I am told that Pat Heffernan will soon be taking the oath of office. I have had some experience in that field myself, as you may know. And I want to say, Pat, that I hope you will believe me, since I was sworn in I have been known to utter a few oaths myself. Many of them were at times directed at members of the press.

But today all is forgotten. I have never, I must say, doubted your energy or your courage or, for that matter, your patriotism. That is why I asked General Hershey [Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of the Selective Service System] to get in touch immediately with each of you. [Laughter]
You may wonder, really, why I am here today, and I guess you are wondering that now, and I will be wondering that when I leave.

Actually I have been out with Mrs. Johnson inspecting the new route for Pennsylvania Avenue. A lot of people have been asking us what we are going to do with our spare time. She can and she does always speak for herself. But I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going down to the ranch Monday afternoon, and I am going to sit on that front porch in a rocking chair for about 10 minutes. And then I am going to read a little and write a little. Then I am going to put on my hat and go out and find Walter Lippmann.[Syndicated columnist who opposed President Johnson's position on the Vietnam conflict] [Laughter]

Someone told me the other day that the press had had a few complaints about the treatment that you had received during this administration. Well this is a fine time to be telling me now. Why didn't you mention it sooner?

Well, I have got some complaints of my own. Maybe I should have mentioned them sooner to you. Getting misquoted, for instance, is one thing I have got to complain about.

I remember that Peter Hurd painting.[A portrait of the President painted by New Mexico artist Peter Hurd in 1965]. Do you all remember that? I never said it was ugly. Actually, I thought it was a pretty good likeness, except for one little detail: It left off the halo.

Again, someone on our Korean trip quoted me as saying that an ancestor of mine was in a fight at the Alamo and lived. Now that is true, but I had no opportunity to answer it, and the correction never catches up with the story. You didn't ever give me a chance to explain it.

What I was trying to say was that my ancestor was in a fight at the Alamo--that is the Alamo Hotel in Eagle Pass, Texas.

And on another occasion I remember where, I guess, you were more accurate. I did show my scar, but I think in explanation you ought to know that it was only after a question from Sarah McClendon.[A reporter representing several Texas newspapers, who questioned the President following his gall bladder operation]. She jumped up behind the weeds out there on the golf course--maybe it wasn't the golf course, but it was a grassy area, I remember, near the Bethesda Hospital--and she said: "Mr. President, you have been in office almost two years and what do you have to show for it?" And I get blamed for giving her the truth.

One of the things we have to show for it, though, is another chapter, and it is almost closed, in the long story of the relationship between the President of the country and the press of the Nation. That relationship began when the country was founded, and now for nearly two centuries the press has held the President and his family and his administration in the fixed and the constant light of publicity. And through nearly two centuries the Presidents have felt, in one degree or another, uncomfortable in that steady glare.

That relationship between the President and the press has always had the nature though, I think, of a lovers' quarrel. And I am not sure it is ever going to be much different. That doesn't bother me as long as both sides concern themselves with the basic fundamentals, and as long as Presidents and each member of the press base their acts upon the respect for the other's purposes. I think most of the time that has been true.

I would be less than candid if I failed to say that I am troubled by the difficulties of communicating with and through the press. I think it might be interesting if at a future gathering of the National Press Club you focused on this problem, if you think it is a problem. Instead of the President, your guest might well be a famous member of the press, itself, who has known both the difficulties of reporting and of dealing with reporters--a few such men as Russell Wiggins, Arthur Sylvester, Douglass Cater. I would be very much interested in their views of what could be done there.

[J. Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post, who served as United States Representative to the United Nations from October 4, 1968, to January 20, 1969; Arthur Sylvester, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs; and S. Douglass Cater, Jr., Special Assistant to the President.]

But despite all the problems we have heard and read about, and despite all the complaints, I am very much an optimist. I have faith in the power of our institutions to solve their problems. And of course that applies to our Government and to our press.

The secret, as the poet put it a long time ago, is to see ourselves, if we can, as others see us. I think that is very good advice for Presidents, and I also think it is good advice for the press and for the people..." (Lyndon Baines Johnson, January 17, 1969).