The Kennedy Cabinet-Three Articles : New Deal Spirit Revived:
DUSCHA, JULIUS
The Kennedy Cabinet-Three Articles NEW DEAL SPIRIT REVIVED By Julius Duscha Washington The Kennedy Cabinet is completed, and Washington likes the looks of the President-elect's carpentry...
...Of course, the all-important little Federal posts still have to be filled, and it is in these jobs that the lame duck politicians and the persons to whom Kennedy owes something will begin to turn up...
...It is also a vigorous Cabinet...
...Indeed, he offered McNamara the Defense job on their first meeting several weeks ago, and he met Rusk for the first time only a week before he named him Secretary of State...
...Or consider 42-year-old Orville L. Freeman, the outgoing Governor of Minnesota, who will be Secretary of Agriculture...
...In the Pentagon, in the State Department or in the encrusted bureaucracy of the Agriculture Department, at least a year is needed...
...To the surprise of many in Washington who regard the President-elect and brother Bobby as modern Machiavellians, Kennedy obviously did not have his Cabinet put together weeks before the election...
...The United States is now in a mild recession which could quickly worsen in the economically bleak and cold winter months...
...This is the promise he apparently extracted from all of the Cabinet members to sign on for four years...
...He was on the telephone night and day during the weeks of work on Cabinet-picking...
...But Washington is hopeful that the high standards set by the President-elect in the selection of his Cabinet will continue on down through the 1,800 policy-making jobs that a Kennedy "employment bureau" of four men is working night and day to fill by January 20...
...Udall is a young, well-informed Congressman from Arizona with a passionate interest in the problems of the West, with which his department is intimately concerned...
...During the campaign Kennedy hedged on the question of a balanced budget, but he is expected to make a real effort to balance it...
...Unlike Ezra Taft Benson, who was certainly the most unsuccessful member of the Eisenhower Cabinet, Freeman has an open mind and realizes the importance of compromise...
...Significantly, there is excitement in the crisp holiday air of Washington, which has been covered with an unusually deep blanket of snow and speculation...
...At 51 the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, is an elder statesmen in Kennedy Cabinet terms...
...In selecting his Cabinet Kennedy demonstrated his independence and his freedom from political and economic dogma...
...The revolving-door appointments of both the Eisenhower and the Truman Administrations, especially in the Defense Department, have been a serious defect and have caused unnecessary problems for the Government...
...Contrast, for example, 38-year-old Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior, with the late Douglas McKay, President Eisenhower's first man in that post...
...He is brilliant but practical...
...Even in a relatively unimportant department like Commerce or Labor, where three-fourths or more of a Secretary's chores are pure housekeeping tasks, it takes a man six to nine months to get abreast of the job...
...The Kennedy Administration already is being confronted with economic problems both here and abroad which will surely restrict its activities and cause it to go slow on campaign promises which demand sharp increases in Federal spending...
...Robert F. Kennedy is the youngest man in the group, 35, and his job as Attorney General is one of the most important in the Cabinet...
...Barely a month before his appointment as Secretary of Defense, former college professor Robert S. McNamara, 44, became the first non-Ford to be named president of the Ford Motor Company...
...Now that the six-week guessing game, "Cabinet, Cabinet, Who's in the Cabinet...
...There also are many jobs on the regulatory agencies that will open up for them as recess appointments come to an end, terms expire and resignations occur...
...The Secretary of Commerce, Luther Hodges, is the only member in his 60s, and his job amounts to little more than housekeeping...
...Although it has become a cliche to say that a President looks for the best possible men to advise him, this does seem to have been the case with Kennedy...
...He knows the economics of farming, but also understands its politics...
...Unlike eight years ago when Eisenhower was preparing to take over, Government workers are not fearful of reduction in force...
...But it seems clear that Kennedy carefully investigated all suggestions that came to him from interested as well as from truly disinterested parties...
...Young though the Cabinet may be, it is composed of men who have gained valuable experience while scurrying up the ladder of success...
...There is an expectation on every side that the Government will expand, that there will be a premium on ideas and initiative, and that perhaps some of the fervor of the New Deal days, which so many now middle-aged reformers look back on with nostalgia and satisfaction, will be recaptured by young President Kennedy and his energetic associates...
...has ended, Washington, which always marks time during the uneasy interregnum, is asking itself how Kennedy went about the job of Cabinet-making...
...And the balance of payments problem, although not of crisis proportions, as it has been falsely labeled by the Eisenhower Administration, is going to make more difficult the adjustments that must be made in military and economic aid...
...His influence undoubtedly will extend into such departments as Health, Education and Welfare, where 50-yearold Abraham Ribicoff, the very successful Governor of Connecticut, will fill the Secretary's chair...
...McKay, on the other hand, was a successful automobile dealer who happened to live in Oregon but had little knowledge of Interior affairs...
...Fifty-oneyear-old Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon, like McNamara a Republican, has distinguished himself in many Government positions...
...The Kennedy Cabinet-Three Articles NEW DEAL SPIRIT REVIVED By Julius Duscha Washington The Kennedy Cabinet is completed, and Washington likes the looks of the President-elect's carpentry work...
...No one really knows except Kennedy, Ted Sorenson, his principal adviser, and a few other persons, none of whom is saying much...
...It is a young Cabinet...
...Secretary of Labor Arthur J. Goldberg, although closely identified with the labor movement for most of his 52 years, is widely respected as a lawyer who has retained the ability to view problems of labor-management objectively, and as one of the country's leading authorities on the development of the collective bargaining process...
...One of the most important aspects of the Kennedy approach was lost in the welter of appointments before the President-elect left Washington to spend the Christmas holiday in Palm Beach...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 1
