ONE-DIMENSIONAL PRESIDENT: LYNDON JOHNSON'S VANTAGE POINT.

The article presents the author's opinions on the book "The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969," by former U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Reviews of Johnson's book tend to resemble reviews of the Johnson Administration: disappointment based on ridiculously high expectations. Already reviews are stressing how Johnson lied, as though lying is something politicians don't do, and as though memoirs are something somehow different from politics. Reviews compare the book with the Pentagon Papers and come away still more indignant, as though private deliberations of presidents ought not to have been different from the public reports of deliberations, or as though final decisions should reveal all of the calculations back of them and all of the alternatives rejected prior to reaching the final decision. These disappointments are more than a mere literary device. Most of the reviewers and president watchers probably sincerely did expect more from Johnson, and went on expecting it late into his administration, especially where domestic politics were concerned.