DEFENSE: The Organization Man

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In the Pentagon itself, where in the last analysis he would either make or break himself, Neil McElroy began making decisions where for months there had been indecision, started reversing the policies that had caused the U.S. to fall behind in the struggle for technological superiority. "More decisions have been made in the Pentagon in the last six weeks than in the last six years," cried Texas' Lyndon Johnson. Said Pundit Stewart Alsop in an otherwise gloom-ridden column last week: "It begins to seem possible that the soap industry has miraculously given this lucky country a first-rate Secretary of Defense."

Shoestrings & Briefcases. No one knows better than blue-eyed, towering (6 ft. 4 in., 210 Ibs.) Neil McElroy that he is still on his Defense Department honeymoon, that in part he looks good because the U.S. so badly wants him to look good, and that his fast start is worthless unless it is the first stage of successful long-term performance. But there are qualities in McElroy that make him a good bet—and Neil McElroy, himself a gambling man, would be the first to put his wager on his chances.

McElroy's own personal drive leaves no room for failure: years ago, as a very junior employee, he decided that he would one day become president of Procter & Gamble, imposed a strict discipline on himself, rammed straight to the top. His Pentagon job requires a sense of urgency, and Neil McElroy has always been a man in a hurry: he dresses fast ("He has broken more shoestrings than any other man in America," says a Cincinnati friend), walks fast ("You can't call a walk with Mac a stroll. It's more like a run"), drives fast ("He's a good driver but he goes like hell"), flies fast, often pausing just long enough to stuff his toilet articles and an extra shirt into a briefcase before taking off cross-country.

In the masculine Pentagon world, McElroy is a man's man: he can be a two-fisted bourbon drinker, barely manages to suppress a lifelong passion for shooting craps, has a short-fuse temper and can use four-letter language that does not spell TIDE. As Defense Secretary he must walk the tightrope between sufficient defense and national extravagance; McElroy's own nature is such that he could, without batting an eye, decide to spend $30 million for Procter & Gamble to buy Clorox, yet at home in Cincinnati he long kept close personal tabs on the amount of gasoline his daughters bought.

"It's That l%." Above all else, Neil McElroy is an expert organization manager coming to a Washington job where only an organizer can make a dent. Cincinnati's Procter & Gamble is the company of the organization man. People do not work for Procter & Gamble; they live it. The work product of each employee is measured as carefully as the chemicals in a detergent formula. Superiority, not seniority, is the basis for promotion—and the basis on which Neil McElroy was named president at 44.