Nation: The Quiet Man

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As a lower-echelon official in Foggy Bottom a dozen years ago, Secretary of State Dean Rusk used to keep a ruled yellow pad in his desk drawer with a list of 70 or 80 problems. Now, as top man in the State Department, Rusk's list of headaches has grown severalfold. "The pace of events," says he, "is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today."

Rusk's farsighted approach to foreign policy should now be serving him and his nation well—for in the sudden, shocking transition to a new Administration, the danger inevitably exists that events may outrun men. This is especially true in the fluid field of world affairs, where mistakes are likely to cost lives, not just votes. Well-prepared as he was to assume the presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson was a relative tyro in that field. But he can derive a large measure of confidence from the fact that Rusk, a man whom John F. Kennedy at first wrote off as "disappointing" but ultimately came to esteem in the highest degree, will be his guide.

On Course. As Kennedy's senior Cabinet officer and as the executor of his foreign policy, Rusk is the most solid symbol of continuity in Johnson's new Administration. Last week when 220 Presidents and princes, Premiers and Foreign Ministers from 92 nations attended a candlelit reception at the State Department after paying final homage to Kennedy, they saw Rusk at Johnson's elbow. To many, the presence of the balding, bland-looking Georgian who pokes fun at himself for looking like "the neighborhood bartender" was assurance that the U.S. would hold to the course that Kennedy had charted.

All through the week, Johnson and Rusk played skillfully on this theme: continuity in change. Less than 24 hours after Kennedy's assassination, Rusk fired off cables to all U.S. ambassadors advising them to emphasize the "continuity of American foreign policy." In the blue and gold chamber of the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson assured his colleagues that "there will be no 'Johnson policy' toward the United Nations any more than there was a 'Kennedy policy.' There was—and is—only a United States policy." In messages to some 60 foreign leaders, including Nikita Khrushchev, as well as in his speech to Congress, Johnson underscored the same theme.