POLICY: Getting It Under One Roof

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In its search for a strategy to deal with the energy crisis, the Nixon Administration has frequently seemed to be playing musical chairs. This year alone, the vital post of chief energy adviser to the President has been filled by three different men. Last week the Administration seemed finally to click on a winning choice. In a move that drew praise even from his harshest critics, President Nixon ordered a sweeping reorganization of the Government's energy policymaking system and installed a tough-minded former investment banker, Deputy Treasury Secretary William Simon, as his newest energy czar (TIME, Dec. 10).

Simon heads a new superagency that was set up by executive order last week as the Federal Energy Office, but will be renamed the Federal Energy Administration once Congress establishes it permanently by statute. It will centralize operations formerly scattered among many Government agencies, gaining authority not only over policy planning and the administration of allocation programs but even over fuel prices. Among many other agencies, FEA will swallow the Cost of Living Council's energy division, which controls prices for gasoline, heating oil and other petroleum products. That should end the type of bureaucratic delay that recently held up for three months an urgently needed mandatory allocation plan for fuels—a plan that, significantly, was originally drafted by Simon. As Simon explained to TIME Correspondent Sam Iker:

"Making and implementing energy policy used to be under a lot of roofs—over at Interior, at the White House, here in Treasury and elsewhere. But now we are going to integrate all policymaking and implementation under one roof. That is the vital change."

Another vital change is the substitution of Simon's driving administrative approach for the slow, cautious methods of his predecessor as energy czar, former Colorado Governor John A. Love. On Wall Street, Simon throve as a bond trader who regularly had to make quick decisions on deals involving many millions of dollars, with painful penalties for failure. A long-hours man who regularly lunches at his desk (on enormous delicatessen sandwiches), Simon does not believe in large formal meetings that seek to form a consensus among those attending. He prefers to get information and advice from close aides at a series of small meetings and then make the decisions himself.

Hardest Problem. In only about a year in Washington, he has impressed other bureaucrats, Congressmen and oil executives with his quick grasp of complex energy policies, and his appointment brought forth a chorus of praise that he finds almost embarrassing. Says Representative Silvio Conte of Massachusetts, a strong critic of the Administration's energy performance: "Of all the people I have dealt with in 15 years on this problem, Simon is the best. He has a handle on it better than anyone in the Government."