Foreign Relations: Two Cheers for Diplomacy

On the campaign trail last fall, Jack Kennedy pledged that U.S. embassies would no longer be political plums for heavy campaign contributors, would be staffed solely "on the basis of ability." But last week, as reports of the Administration's favorites for diplomatic posts filtered through Washington, many of Kennedy's staunchest admirers wondered aloud where reward stopped and ability began. "Almost everybody has given three cheers for President Kennedy's top domestic appointees," wrote the New York Times's James B. Reston, a Kennedy admirer, "but two cheers is all he is likely to get for his diplomatic appointees." Among the front runners for top ambassadorial assignments:

Lieut. General James Maurice Gavin, 53, now president of Arthur D. Little, Inc., largest private research and management consultant firm in the U.S., will get the touchy and prestigious post in Paris. Onetime boss of the Army's Research and Development section, ex-Paratrooper Gavin petulantly resigned from the Army in 1958 after losing a battle to push his service farther into the space and missile business. Hustling into print with his book, War and Peace in the Space Age, Gavin impressed the then Senator Kennedy (who reviewed the book for the Reporter magazine) with his argument that future wars would be limited and tactical, necessitating a flexible NATO equipped with a "fire brigade" capable of quelling brushfire wars in Europe or Africa. During the campaign, Gavin offered Kennedy foreign policy recommendations by mail, sold himself as a potential diplomat with flair rather than experience, was pushed for Paris by Kennedy's Georgetown friend and neighbor. Bill Walton. Kennedy's design may be to match one obstreperous general with another (Gavin knows De Gaulle slightly), but the Quai d'Orsay was discreetly baffled by the appointment. So, less discreetly, were State Department regulars. Since Paris is one of the most expensive American embassies to maintain. Gavin will be the principal beneficiary of the increased expenses to be allotted to nonwealthy ambassadors.