Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks to the Members of the See the U.S.A. Committee.

August 11, 1965

OUT HERE in the Rose Garden our meetings are both happy and hot, and at this time of day it is more the latter than the former.

The Vice President told me that he had informed Bob Short that this job that he had would take a lot of toil and sweat, and it looks like today, at least half of that prophesy is being fulfilled.

I came out here for just a moment to say primarily that I thank you and I appreciate what you have done, and what you are willing to do, and what those that you speak for and represent--your stockholders and your management, and your employees--have tried to help us do. I am most grateful to each of you and for that matter, all of our travel industry in the United States, for your cooperation and for the support that you have given the See the U.S.A. program.

All Americans are really heirs of travelers who originally came here from far across the seas to cast their lot in this great country of ours. What we want now is for that tradition to be honored. We want Americans to travel. We want our friends from other lands to travel. Now we aren't trying to discourage travel anyplace--we never have. There have been some misconceptions in that regard. But we are trying to encourage more travel to see more of the wonders and the beauties of this vast and marvelous land of ours.

And we feel in doing that we will not only build a better country and a better people, but we will also make great contributions to our own industry and to our own system.

We must, and we do, recognize that there is a great gap between what Americans spend on travel abroad and what visitors from other lands spend here. Most of us are rather competitive and I just hate to see us do so poorly from a competitive standpoint. I hate to see the balance weighed so heavily the other way.

Since you started talking about travel in the U.S.A., Mrs. Johnson hasn't been home a full week!

MRS. JOHNSON. And I have only just whetted my appetite.

THE PRESIDENT. And that is bad. I don't like that, but it is even worse when she's got my daughters traveling too. And Luci is enjoying it so much that she is going to some places for repeat performances, and now she's having to get a blonde wig in order to go.

Lynda started out at Grasshopper, Arizona, and went to Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado and all those beautiful scenes of the West. Luci has almost taken up residence in a good part of the Midwest that she has made her travels. Mrs. Johnson has been doing a good deal of it.

And I hope before the year is out, when Congress gets out of here, I can travel some, too.

This gap that I was talking to you about, where they were doing a better job competitively than you are doing--and I don't know why a travel bureau, airline, hotel, or a different kind of chef can make their things look so much better to our people than you can make them to look to our people--but that gap amounted to $1.6 billion last year, and it is going to be considerably larger this year. You are going to lose almost $2 billion more than comes this way, and that is something that you are going to have to face up to and cope with.

This Cabinet task force that is headed by our popular and very able Vice President has done a great deal to help us put this problem in focus. I don't know how many other people he has got traveling, but I told you he has got all the folks around the White House traveling. He has a secretary out in New England this week, going up to see that area. But the most striking fact and the most significant fact is that we have grossly neglected the potential of our tourism and our travel here at home. We have concentrated on selling tickets all right--we have done a good job of that--but I don't think we have concentrated enough on being sure where those tickets are being sold to, and where they are going, especially places that our growing families and the families abroad could really afford.

I believe this is being rectified by what you are doing here today, by this meeting, and by the Vice President's task force. I think you are awakening the realization of the opportunities that we have here in our 50 States.

I have been meeting with some of the Governors of the States, but the States and many cities and many elements of the travel industry are working together much more effectively than they did just a few months ago. And I want to assure you the resources of this Government that I head are all-out, fully committed to support this effort.

America is truly, I think, "America the Beautiful." And it is difficult to begin cataloging the wonders of nature or even the wonders of man, but they are here to behold, and they are here to enjoy, and I hope that you can contribute to both the beholding and the enjoying.

Only the poets, I guess, could do them justice-and I am not going to quote any poetry here today--but a friend of mine sent me a line the other day from an ancient Greek writer who advised: "If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one; and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry."

And I am taking that advice. I am going to be brief because I want to give Bob Short all the time he needs to report on progress and to get some progress.

And all else aside now--balance of payments, fiscal factors, economic growth, or whatever--I regard it as a matter of first importance. Your President feels that we should encourage our own citizens and the citizens of other nations to get better acquainted with what we have here in America.

We think America is a beautiful land. We think it is going to be more beautiful. We think we have fine highways. We think we are going to improve them more. We think we have a strong land. We know we have a young land. It is alive with change, excitement, and constant newness.

Ours is really an open land, an open society with no walls around it, nothing to hide within it, and we want the world and we want Americans themselves to see the U.S.A. For to see it, I think, is to understand better why we Americans all love peace and why we love freedom so much, and why we would like for all the people of the world to love it as we do.

So I would hope that when we take a look at the ledger at the first of the year, that this competitive operation of trying to stimulate and arouse interest in various forms of travel and various sections to travel in, various points of beauty--that we will find that our efforts have been helpful and have been successful.

Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:40 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House, following an introduction by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. During his remarks he referred to Robert E. Short of Minneapolis, Chairman of the See the U.S.A. Committee, which had been established to encourage tourism throughout the United States. The group included 60 representatives of the transportation and hotel industries in the Nation who supported the Committee's program.

Following the President's remarks, Mrs. Johnson spoke briefly. The text of the Vice President's and Mrs. Johnson's remarks is printed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 1, pp. 79, 80).

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to the Members of the See the U.S.A. Committee. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/241047

Filed Under

Categories

Location

Washington, DC

Simple Search of Our Archives