The President-Elect: The Quiet Time

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT

By Dec. 1, 1952, President-elect Dwight Eisenhower had already named his entire Cabinet. Richard Nixon is in no such hurry—partly because he thinks Ike should have weighed his choices more cautiously. Despite some muttering among members of Lyndon Johnson's Administration that new Cabinet officers had better start consulting with their outgoing counterparts soon in order to smooth the transfer of power, Nixon was moving with characteristic caution.

As he did during crucial moments of the campaign, the President-elect sought complete privacy. On Florida's Key Biscayne for much of the week, Nixon considered the most important of some 3,000 federal posts he must fill—jobs ranging in rank and responsibility from chauffeur to the twelve Cabinet jobs. Nixon will not announce any appointments until late next week at the earliest, but speculation was inevitably growing about the makeup of his Administration's top echelon.

Reasonable Bets. C. Douglas Dillon, John Kennedy's Secretary of the Treasury and an Under Secretary of State under Eisenhower, was thought to be a favorite for Secretary of State. David Rockefeller, head of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Arthur Burns, a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ike, were both reasonable bets for Secretary of the Treasury. Republican National Chairman Ray Bliss may become Postmaster General, which would let Nixon put his own man atop the G.O.P. apparatus. Michigan's Governor George Romney or Pennsylvania's Governor Raymond Shafer could be named Secretary of Commerce.

Nixon Advisers Robert Finch and John Mitchell, along with Lawyer Charles Rhyne, who headed Citizens for Nixon-Agnew this fall, are in the running for Attorney General. Finch, however, is in a delicate political dilemma. Now lieutenant governor of California, he has built an impressive constituency among moderate Republicans and independents at home. He would like to run for the U.S. Senate or the governorship in 1970, but both George Murphy and Ronald Reagan seem to like their current roles, and will probably seek reelection. Finch, 43, must either return home to tend to his political power base or come to Washington and risk losing the California support that some Republicans think might propel him to the G.O.P. presidential nomination in 1976.

Talent Search. Whatever Finch's future, his role in Nixon's current talent search is crucial. The President-elect, closeted with Finch, Mitchell and Assistant Bob Haldeman, is working his way through two tomes, each as thick as a Washington telephone book, to mold his Administration. Prepared over the past seven months by Dr. Glenn Olds, former president of Massachusetts' Springfield College, the black-bound volumes contain scouting reports on some 1,500 possibilities for the Government's top 300 jobs. It remained to be seen how far Nixon will bow to political considerations in his appointments, but Olds deliberately gave that factor little weight.