Lady Bird remembered for her cause

When Lady Bird Johnson died a few weeks ago, our television screens were temporarily filled with wildflowers and other pleasant reminders of the remarkable former first lady's chief cause.

Beautification had been her game, of course. I interviewed her once long ago at the grand opening of the butterfly house at Georgia's Callaway Gardens. I remember well her pleasant demeanor and down-to-earth approach.

For one thing, she arrived unescorted and made time to talk to a beginning reporter from a small Alabama newspaper. The two of us sat alone in a conference room and discussed butterflies, poesies and politics. She never once checked her wristwatch.

But most memorable was Lady Bird's passionate insistence that ours could be a cleaner, more beautiful country.

I wonder if she died disillusioned.

Her campaign for a cleaner America seems just a faded dream, at least in my part of the South. She battled for billboard control and those green screens placed around automobile junkyards and other unsightly businesses. Parts of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 are still some help, I'm sure.

Yet litter seems worse than ever. Heedless development and clear-cutting have taken away countless trees. Chain businesses pave over the world, then pay a team of landscapers to plug in the predictable, token greenery. Too often nowadays beauty is locked behind the gates of rich neighborhoods or confined to national parks.

The government spends more on public-beautification projects than it did in LBJ's heyday, but too often it's like putting perfume on a pig. In the fall I see poppies planted in medians that already sprout drink cans and fast-food packaging. American flags hang from light posts ringed by litter. In a culture that will pay for a Cadillac with an air-conditioned seats, people prize clean floorboards more than pristine roadways.

First lady causes often are a lot of thunder and no rain. All first ladies are well-intentioned, and most of them seem sincere. But not a lot happens just because the wife of a president puts on a speech dress and decrees it should.

Nancy Reagan crusaded against drugs. Laura Bush supports literacy. But most days it seems the U.S. has just said no to literacy.

Jackie Kennedy picked the cause least likely to succeed in the U.S.: culture and the fine arts. Music and art programs are always the first things to go in public schools and government budgets.

Hillary Clinton, of course, had the biggest first-lady failure ever: health care. She took the hobby status of a first lady's cause and tried to elevate it to something universal. The medical industrial complex knocked her right back to the drawing room.

Lady Bird accomplished something significant in that we remember her pet project. She worked hard at it, creating her own staff, drawing the blueprint that other modern first ladies would follow.

But, just like presidents, some first ladies fare better at publicizing and achieving their goals than others. Quick. What were Rosalynn Carter's, Betty Ford's, Pat Nixon's and Barbara Bush's causes? Mental health. Women's rights. Volunteerism. Literacy.

We best remember Rosalynn Carter for her steel-magnolia drawl, Betty Ford for her remarkable candor and Pat Nixon and Barbara Bush for their fierce spousal loyalty.

It's said that Lady Bird had a shrewd business sense and could read a balance sheet as well as anyone. Hillary and Laura, of course, had their own careers even after marriage, a giant step forward in American politics.

But nobody elected any one of them. Not yet, anyhow.

It will be interesting to watch Bill if Hillary's elected president. He'll start with a clean slate for the role of first mate.

The former leader of the Free World would be slightly out-of-focus, a few steps behind, in all the swearing-in photographs. He'd have to accept that, smile adoringly and settle on some worthwhile cause to champion.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson writes for King Features Syndicate.