Inertia

On the eve of turning the U.S. Government over to Ike Eisenhower, Harry Truman last week had a confession. "I could have clotted things up so he wouldn't get straightened out for a year." Truman, talking to a reporter, hastened to add: "Of course, I wouldn't do that and I told everybody in my Administration to cooperate fully in the turnover."

The statement was as interesting for what it admitted as for what it denied.

Harry Truman was a genius with a political booby trap, and he knew it. He had, apparently, resisted that impulse. But even without clotting, the Truman Administration had done--or left undone--enough things to make the changeover a long, tough proposition.

Defense Secretary Lovett, a Republican himself, waited until last week to announce that the U.S. could hardly fight a war under the present chaotic setup of his Defense Department. Secretary of State Acheson, for his part, bade farewell to the U.S. Foreign Service with a thinly veiled appeal to the Foreign Service to stay true to Acheson policies & principles, come what may. Harry Truman sent Congress a budget with a $9.9 billion deficit. He also wrote Ike a letter asking him to put 400,000 "temporary" Government employees on the permanent civil-service list. If Ike does, he freezes 400,000 jobs which the Democrats had for patronage; if he doesn't, he irritates a large body of entrenched Government employees.

Fortunately, the Eisenhower administration was already better organized than any other incoming change-of-party administration in history. This week, in Manhattan's Commodore Hotel, Eisenhower presided over the first full but unofficial meeting of his Cabinet and chief advisers.

Already the Eisenhower team could sense that its first big job would be to overcome the inertia--both planned & unplanned--of the long Democratic era. Not until the new Republican administration began exploring the labyrinthine corridors of Washington, after January 20, would it know the true state of its inheritance.

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