The New Administration: Easing Into Power

"Remember," Richard Nixon admonished Republican congressional leaders last week, "we've got a Democratic Congress and we want to get along with them." His warning underscored what has become a dominant element in Nixon's plans for the immediate future. After a cautious campaign and a transition period relatively free of friction, Nixon apparently intends to ease through his first months of incumbency in much the same manner.

At a two-hour meeting in Washington with the Republican leaders of Congress, the President-elect made it clear that he had no intention of hurriedly sending an ambitious legislative program up to Capitol Hill. "We've got to mark time for a while," said one participant.

Instead of requesting major legislation, Nixon intends to use executive orders and existing programs whenever possible. His approach was aptly summed up by Robert Finch, a longtime Nixon friend who is resigning his post as Lieutenant Governor of California to become the new Administration's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. "Our job," Finch told newsmen last week, "is to rationalize and implement the legislation now on the books."

Shift of Emphasis. An apt example is the law-and-order field. There, the President-elect may work with the Omnibus Crime Control Act, passed by the 90th Congress, to expand federal aid to local law enforcement authorities. Under the Act, Nixon's Attorney General may sanction the use of wiretapping in certain cases—authority that the Johnson Administration declined to use. Nixon may also double the size of the Justice Department's organized crime section, raise it to the status of a separate division within the agency and elevate its chief to the rank of Assistant Attorney General.

Skeptical of the maze of domestic programs created by the Great Society, the President-elect hopes to shift the emphasis from federal action to private initiative in antipoverty efforts and slum rehabilitation. Even Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat who as Assistant Secretary of Labor helped create the anti-poverty program and who will serve Nixon as a White House assistant specializing in urban problems, is highly critical of the way the present setup works. In a book to be published this winter, Moynihan calls the current Administration's approach "sloppy" and misguided (see box, page 14).

Nixon would like to shift Operation Head Start, one of the few major successes of the war on poverty, to HEW. The poverty program's effort to furnish legal aid to the poor may be assigned to the Justice Department. Nixon and Moynihan would also like to scrap the Job Corps, which they consider inefficient. But he would need congressional approval for such steps—sanction that would not be easily obtained.