Nation: A Trio for Tough Departments

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Composed of a businessman, a political pro and a Senator

To run three of the Federal Government's sprawling, complicated and unglamorous departments, Reagan picked a steer-roping businessman, a party operative and a Senator who was once his vice-presidential choice. The nuts-and-bolts trio:

A Cowboy at Commerce

On the professional rodeo circuit he is known as Mac Baldrige, a steer roper who finishes in the money about a third of the time (for $1,605 in prizes last year). To the uninitiated he is Malcolm Baldrige, chairman of Scovill Inc., a power in Connecticut Republican affairs and a close friend of Vice President-elect George Bush's. As Ronald Reagan's choice for Secretary of Commerce, Baldrige will bring to Washington —a proven capacity for managing, along with the practice lasso he keeps by his desk.

Despite his slow Western drawl, Baldrige, 58, son of a Nebraska Congressman, embodies the Eastern Establishment that many Reagan backers distrust. He is a graduate of Hotchkiss and Yale (class of 1943) and the brother of Author Letitia Baldrige, who was Jacqueline Kennedy's White House social secretary.

After 3½ years in the Army, where he rose to the rank of captain, Baldrige went to work as a shop foreman in an ironworks, rising through the ranks to become president. He joined Scovill in 1962, and is credited with changing the company from a stodgy brass manufacturer with sales of $164 million to a conglomerate that now has sales of about $1 billion in goods ranging from appliances and building products to locks and zippers.

Lean (6 ft. 1 in., 175 Ibs.) and handsome as a cigarette-ad cowboy, Baldrige lives with his wife Margaret, the first woman member of the local volunteer fire department, on a rambling estate in Woodbury. The couple have two grown daughters. Baldrige first began riding at age seven in Nebraska. He took up steer roping in the 1950s, turned professional in the late '60s, and now competes in an average of eight rodeos a year. "I just plain like it," he once said. "I like the timing, the coordination, the partnership with a good horse, the excitement of it."

At Commerce, a collection of trade and technology agencies, with 48,170 employees and a 1981 fiscal budget of $2.8 billion, Baldrige's major excitement may be the challenge of bettering foreign trade. Said the Secretary-designate last week: "We are going to put a lot of emphasis on exports, productivity and getting rid of some unnecessary regulations that are smothering our job growth."

An Ex-Liberal for HHS

So impressed was Richard Schultz Schweiker when Ronald Reagan asked him to be his vice-presidential running mate in 1976 that the Pennsylvania Senator saved and later framed the airline ticket that brought him to California for their momentous meeting. Reagan's attempt to wrest the party's presidential nomination from Gerald Ford by prematurely naming the liberal Schweiker to his ticket failed, of course, but it left an indelible mark on Schweiker. Since then he has grown steadily more conservative. Now Reagan has given Schweiker, 54, a chance to turn philosophy into policy by naming him Secretary of Health and Human Services.