The President-Elect: Operation Rooney

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to Italy for the last four years. Foreign Service careermen find it hard enough to get by as Ambassadors to Austria (a $4,000 annual allowance) or Ireland ($2,300), absolutely impossible to take on such major posts as London ($8,500) or Paris ($5,000), where the allowance does not even pay for the traditional Fourth of July party, when as many as 5,000 Americans in town drop by. (The British ambassador in Washington gets an estimated $100,000 for expenses.) Result: the U.S. jobs go regularly to wealthy campaign contributors—some good, some poor —who can afford to foot the five-figure expense tab.

Congressman Rooney was not the only recipient of the soothing Kennedy magic last week. He was followed shortly by Arkansas' Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee. A trifle touchy since he was turned down for Secretary of State in favor of Dean Rusk, Fulbright had publicly spoken out against one of the key items of the New Frontier legislative program—a proposal to boost the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25. Fulbright got a personal welcome at the West Palm Beach airport, spent long hours in the villa and on the golf course, was treated to an after-dark press conference in the patio. Midway in talk about the need for an ambassador-at-large, Caroline Kennedy toddled out, wearing a robe with a rabbit-eared hood and carrying a pair of her mother's black shoes. "Hi, Daddy," she said. "Aren't you going to come in?" Daddy blushed scarlet beneath his tan, murmured his answer ("In a few minutes") as he helped his daughter on with the outsize shoes, grinned at reporters: "I didn't plan this." As Caroline clip-clopped back into the house, somber Bill Fulbright was smiling as broadly as anyone there.