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served to cover Johnson's immediate embarrassment. Ickes said, “Well, this is rather sudden, Mr. President,” and so on. He carried it off. He said enough sharp things to give everybody a chance to laugh, which covered the situation. He said, “I've got to talk to you about this a bit. As you know, I believe in public works, and so forth, but I want to talk to you about some of the elements of it before I really pitch into it. Naturally, I haven't given it any thought, and so forth.”

I saw that Johnson was just about wild. He didn't say a word. As far as I can recall, he said nothing. Cabinet meeting was about to break up and the President was leaving. He was sitting next to the President and I sat at the other end of the table. As we broke up, Johnson didn't say a word. He responded to the President's first little words of flattery to him, that he was grateful for what he had contributed to this idea, that he was appointing him, and so forth. He had made a little patriotic speech in rejoinder, saying how much he appreciated, that he would do his best, and so forth, as he was always a good soldier.

I realized that he was now in a very disturbed state of mind by the end of this meeting when he realized that he wasn't going to have public works and that Harold Ickes was going to. The President was making his preparations to leave