The Great Man Hunt

Soon after the election. Jack Kennedy called his closest advisers together in Palm Beach for a session on Cabinetmaking. His instructions were succinct: "I want to get the best men I can for these Cabinet jobs, and I don't care if they are Democrats, Republicans or Igorots." Kennedy's lieutenants thereupon set forth on the great man hunt. It was a long, laborious and tedious process, checking out the past performances and future potentialities of dozens of men. There were grumblings that Kennedy was vacillating and taking a long time with the job.* But when he fed out the last of his Cabinet choices last week, there was widespread agreement that he had assembled some promising advisers and executives.

As usual, the tight little Kennedy inner group had done the kind of meticulous preparation that should fascinate political science classes for years to come. A screening committee of veteran Kennedy staffers, headed by Brother-in-Law Sargent Shriver and Larry O'Brien, began combing banks, foundations, campuses and corporations for the names of likely candidates and assembling background data. In some cases, very little research was needed (e.g., Arkansas Senator Bill Fulbright, who was already well known to Kennedy). In others (e.g., Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, whom Kennedy had never met), a complete dossier was ordered. As new possibilities surfaced, the FBI, as always, provided full security checks on each man, and Kennedy's right-hand man, Ted Sorensen, gave his imprimatur to the political background.

Road to Pakistan. Every day, Sarge Shriver arrived at Kennedy's Georgetown home with a bulging briefcase in hand and a few comments to make on the virtues and liabilities of prospects. Kennedy kept as busy as his staff, making telephone calls on his own all over the country, poring over the papers that Shriver brought him (e.g., the collected speeches and writings of Rusk), questioning visitors who filed endlessly through his drawing room. Before approving Harvard's David Bell as Budget Director, the Kennedy dragnets even checked Pakistan to see how he had done as an economic adviser to the government. Checking up on another contender, Jack Kennedy was told that the prospect had once been considered quite a lady-killer (Jack's reaction: an indulgent chuckle).

Names were leaked to newsmen to sound out public reaction. The name of Bobby Kennedy, as his brother's Attorney General, was floated to the New York Times four weeks ago, and brought immediate outcries of impropriety. Jack satisfied himself that the objections were serious but not fatal, and withheld Bobby's appointment till the last moment, while the public was told of other choices. Another trial balloon, Bill Fulbright as Secretary of State, was quickly shot down by Negro groups and Northern liberals who feared his tepid segregationist background. Negro Congressman William Dawson, 74, suggested as a possible Postmaster General, was never seriously considered as a candidate despite Dawson's announced refusal of the job and Kennedy's public regrets. But as a trial balloon, his consideration presumably won a smidgen of gratitude from some Negroes (who had displayed a conspicuous ingratitude for civil rights advances under President Eisenhower).

Jack Kennedy's most delicate problem was what to do with the liberals he had courted assiduously and yet--because of the closeness of his election--did not want to put in top posts. Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams had his taste buds all set for a Cabinet job and was politically deserving, having "pledged" Michigan's 51 votes at a crucial hour before the Democratic Convention. Kennedy skillfully and carefully built up the importance of the post of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, announced it early with heavy fanfare, and Soapy gracefully accepted. Liberal Adlai Stevenson was headed off to be Ambassador to the United Nations, and the job was made to sound more glamorous than the Secretary of State's own.

A strenuous effort to draft Manhattan Banker Robert Lovett, a Republican who held down half a dozen key offices with distinction in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, failed because of his poor health, but Lovett was a prime mover in recommending Rusk and McNamara. Bobby Kennedy was the most reluctant candidate, fearing the public and political wrath over a brother act in the new Administration--but he was finally persuaded, after Jack conferred with him in an upstairs bedroom (to escape the milling crowds belowstairs) for 20 minutes, and again, after another wave of misgivings, at breakfast 36 hours later.

One of the hardest to land was Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon. Kennedy never considered a liberal for the Treasury post, sought his men almost exclusively in the ranks of conservative bankers. World Bank President Eugene Black, 62, was easily the most admired prospect, but after John McCloy, board chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and Lovett refused the lure, Kennedy decided that Republican Dillon was his man, and went after him personally. Once last week the President-elect went to the length of going secretly to Dillon's Washington home. Dillon accepted only after checking Dwight Eisenhower and Dick Nixon to make sure they would not resent his decision.

Back to Ann Arbor. In nearly every case the acid test was a personal interview with Kennedy. Shriver had arranged a Georgetown meeting with McNamara during a scouting expedition to Detroit, and McNamara passed the test with highest marks. About half an hour after McNamara was ushered into the Kennedy home, he and the President-elect emerged to tell the shivering press that a Defense Secretary had been found (McNamara's black Lincoln Continental was kept purring at the curb, with an aide inside holding a car telephone to relay the news to Mrs. McNamara in Ann Arbor). "He was decisive and incisive," said a Kennedy aide. "That's what Jack liked."

Others failed to meet the confrontation test. Fred V. Heinkel, head of the Missouri Farmers Association, was a leading contender for Agriculture Secretary until he arrived in Georgetown. But he had no answers to several key questions put to him by Kennedy. Jack was astounded and, to double-check, had Bobby question Heinkel alone. When Heinkel left, late in the afternoon, he was no longer in the running. Jack settled on Minnesota's defeated Governor Orville Freeman, a Marine combat veteran, for Agriculture.

Through the busy week Jack Kennedy worked as though he were still in the middle of the campaign. Outside 3307 N Street reporters shuffled on the sidewalk dressed like Eskimos, waiting for each new appointment, in the coldest assignment since the Winter Olympics.* At week's end Jack Kennedy flew off to the balmier climes of Palm Beach for a big family reunion and a long Christmas vacation. Said Clark Clifford, the organizational draftsman for the new Administration: "In my experience, I have never seen the time, study and effort go into the selection of a Cabinet that has gone into this one."

* In 1912-13, when four months elapsed between election and inauguration, Woodrow Wilson disappeared for a leisurely month's seclusion in Bermuda, announced his entire Cabinet on Inauguration Day. *The undoubted toast of the National Press Club was a Kennedy neighbor, Helen Louise Montgomery, who opened her front parlor to the frigid newsmen, amiably permitted the installation of four telephones and passed around hot coffee and plates of "Mamie Eisenhower fudge."

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