When a visiting US president got drunk as a skunk at The Lodge

Presidents of the United States have had some curious moments during their visits to Australia.

None was more startling than the night president Lyndon Baines Johnson, drunk as a skunk, was conveyed through Canberra’s late-night streets while lying in the rear footwell of a police car.

Anthony Albanese has invited Joe Biden to address parliament before a meeting of the Quad alliance in Sydney in May.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It was 1966 and Johnson, better known as LBJ, was the first US president to visit Australia.

We shall return to that little-known highlight of his trip a bit later in the column, but first we note that in a couple of months Joe Biden is scheduled to become the sixth POTUS to visit our shores.

You can be sure those responsible for security arrangements are in a lather of excitement, though they almost certainly don’t have to worry about Biden getting pie-eyed and ending up flaked out in the back of an Australian police car.

Presidents these days aren’t allowed such glorious freedom. They travel in a bubble, surrounded by armoured vehicles of all types and by hundreds of serious men and women in black suits whispering up their sleeves and burdened with weapons that might make James Bond feel underdressed.

Before Biden even touches down in Australia, US transport aircraft will have landed at least two armour-plated Cadillacs, each known as The Beast, and several black Secret Service SUVs stacked with weapons and communications equipment.

When he finally arrives in his Air Force One jumbo jet – one of two identical planes that travel with the president, in case one becomes disabled – Biden will travel through the streets in a cavalcade of about 30 vehicles, the drivers of the two (or perhaps three) Beasts smoothly swapping positions so no one can tell precisely which is carrying the president.

On board The Beast – which provides a most uncomfortable ride, thanks to its tonnes of armour plating and huge solid-rubber bulletproof tyres – will be bottles of Biden’s blood type.

Travelling nearby will be an ambulance and doctors.

Those hosting a visit by such a heavily protected leader have nightmares about something going wrong on their turf, and accede to just about any request to ensure the president’s people are content.

No visitor, for instance, is supposed to be allowed to carry a weapon into Australia’s Parliament House. But no US Secret Service agent has ever left his or her weapon behind when accompanying the president, either. A request from the Secret Service is not really a request.

And so, there is always a special exemption for the close protection agents of the president, and you’d best be aware that when Biden arrives to address a joint sitting of the Australian parliament, having been invited to do so by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, those serious men and women in black suits are well-equipped to protect their man.

Happily, they held their fire in 2003, when two Australian Greens senators thought it was a good idea to stand and loudly lecture George W. Bush when he was delivering a speech in the House of Representatives.

John Howard (Bush’s “man of steel”) was prime minister and several months previously, Australia had joined the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Prime minister John Howard and parliamentary staff prevent Greens senators Kerry Nettle (third from left) and Bob Brown (behind her) from approaching president George W. Bush (far right) on October 23, 2003.Credit: Reuters/Pool

Suddenly, Bob Brown leapt to his feet and cried: “Mr Bush, this is Australia. Respect our nation. Return our Australians from Guantanamo Bay. Respect the laws of the world and the world will respect you.”

Senator Kerry Nettle joined in, accusing the US of bullying.

Both senators were banned from Parliament for 24 hours, which meant they couldn’t attend an address the following day by Chinese president Hu Jintao, whose minders might not have been so composed as those protecting Bush.

Four years later, the ABC’s Chaser team of comedians risked all by busting the $150 million “ring of steel” around Bush and other world leaders attending the APEC summit in Sydney.

The Chaser’s fake motorcade of two black vans, a hire car and two motorcycles flying the Canadian flag got all the way to Bush’s hotel, where Chaser lad Chas Licciardello emerged, dressed to look like Osama Bin Laden. It seems astonishing now that snipers held their fire until the Chaser team was arrested.

US president Lyndon Johnson drives through Melbourne on October 21, 1966. A member of his security detail bears the brunt of paint thrown at the presidential limousine by opponents of the Vietnam War.Credit: Age archives

The huge security cordon around the last president to visit, Barack Obama in 2011, came unstuck when a reporter from The Age discovered, abandoned on a Canberra roadside, a classified booklet containing all the president’s movements down to the minute, plus details of his security convoy and dozens of handy phone numbers.

But nothing quite compares with LBJ’s trip to Australia in 1966. In Melbourne, his limousine was pelted with paint bombs by anti-Vietnam War protesters. In Sydney, they flung themselves in front of his motorcade, leading premier Robert Askin to urge, allegedly: “Drive over the bastards.”

In Canberra, Johnson went to The Lodge for a calming dinner with prime minister Harold Holt, while his limousine was sent to the Hotel Rex, where he was staying, to fool protesters into believing he was tucked up for the night.

Much later that evening, a police car cruised from The Lodge to the Hotel Rex, where no protester was in sight.

In the back seat sat the head of the Special Branch, Sergeant Ron Dillon. At his feet, stretched on the floor, was Lyndon Baines Johnson, splendidly drunk from an extended drinking session with Holt.

It was kept secret for years until Dillon himself merrily retailed the story to my old mate Jack Waterford of The Canberra Times, who even more merrily wrote the yarn.

Armed protection? Why, LBJ needed little more than an aspirin.

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