Fifty Miles from Home Fifty Miles from Home - Paragon Foundation

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the disappointment of the crowd, however, the chief
executive declined to try it on then but offered to model it
later at the White House. Felled by an assassin’s bullet a few
hours later in Dallas, JFK never got the chance to make
good on his promise.
lyndon Johnson’s association with the cowboy image
was well established before he settled into the presidential
saddle. outfitted in Western wear and relaxing at his ranch,
the rangy Texan both looked and played the part of a
Westerner. He enjoyed showing off the 2,700-acre spread to
visitors and often could be seen touring u.S. government
officials and foreign heads of state around the property. as
vice president, his ranch guests had included Field marshal
mohammed ayub Khan of Pakistan and West German
Chancellor Konrad adenauer. In December 1963, only a
month after the Kennedy assassination, he invited ludwig
erhard, the new leader of West Germany, to the lBJ Ranch.
The following spring he extended the same honor to
President Gustavo Diaz ordaz of mexico. The president’s
special guests nearly always left the Texas White House with
both a better understanding of its occupant and a cowboy
hat, bestowed with great ceremony by their host. one
reporter dubbed lBJ’s informal ranch meetings with foreign
heads of state “barbecue diplomacy.”
The 1964 election pitted Johnson against Senator Barry
Goldwater of arizona, another politician who identified
strongly with cowboy tradition. although both candidates
invoked their cowboy credentials
during the campaign, journalists and
cartoonists tended to portray the
bellicose Goldwater as a trigger-happy,
black-hatted villain armed with nuclear
missiles in his pistol holsters.
Johnson won reelection by a
landslide, and, in high spirits, hosted a
barbecue at the Texas White House for
his staff and the press soon after.
During the festivities, the president and
his running mate, Hubert Humphrey
of minnesota, appeared on horseback
dressed as ranchers, to the delight of
photographers who spread the image
around the world.
although comfortable portraying
the traditional cowboy hero on his own
range, Johnson was keenly aware that
the image did not play well in some quarters. according to
one presidential staffer, the president-elect urged Texans
bound for his inaugural to leave their boots and hats at
home and not to ride into Washington like a bunch of wild
cowboys on a spree.
For a world worried about a nuclear holocaust, the image of
a missile-toting u.S. presi dent facing off against his Soviet
w w w. pa r a g o n f o u n d at i o n .o r g
counterpart in a Hollywood-style Western showdown
proved even more troublesome. one West German reporter
wondered if “‘the cowboy from Texas’ believed in ‘lynch law’
or ‘international law.’”
French President Charles de Gaulle, Johnson’s perhaps
most vocal foreign critic, considered the american president
crude and provincial, with little appreciation of the world at
large. “Johnson, he’s a cowboy, and that’s saying everything,”
he said, “the very portrait of america. He reveals the
country to us as it is, rough and raw. If he didn’t exist, we’d
have to invent him.”
With the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965, the
president increasingly came under attack in political
cartoons and anti-war posters as a reckless and overbearing
cowboy. Three years later, haggard and saddle worn, lyndon
Johnson hung up his political spurs and retired to his Texas
ranch. although it seemed with Johnson’s retirement that
the cowboy image had been put out to pasture once and for
all, its absence from the oval office was short-lived.
Republican Richard Nixon, who replaced Johnson as
president, was an inveterate fan of motion pictures. He was
especially fond of Western films directed by John Ford and
starring John Wayne, whose cinematic portrayals of the
cowboy set the modern standard for the genre. Wayne was
also active in politics and had openly supported Nixon’s bid
for the White House. In 1970, the Wayne Western Chisum
struck a special chord with the president, who referred to
richard M. nixon
the cowboy justice meted out in the film’s plot to help
explain his own views on law and order to reporters at a
press conference.
In 1974, the cowboy of popular culture made another
unexpected appearance, this time on air Force one carrying
President Nixon and Soviet Premier leonid Brezhnev to a
summit conference in California. Flying over the Grand