Secret Shake-Up

Jack Kennedy's first major reshuffling of his Administration (see THE NATION) caught the U.S. press by surprise, but the press soon found its tongue.

Memos & Mice. As might be expected, hardly anyone agreed with anyone else. Columnist Walter Lippmann found the 'shakeup "heartening evidence of the President's uncommon ability to learn from experience." But to David Lawrence it was "a tragic example of experimentation, lack of system, and the evil effect of partisan politics on the efficient conduct of government." Positioning himself in the cautious middle, Columnist Marquis Childs wrote that the State Department is "an overblown machine that carries into the jet age much of the apparatus of the horse-and-buggy era ... Whether it is resolved by the changes just announced is an open question."

To the New York Herald Tribune, the big move was "a sorting out of round pegs and square holes." The Detroit News found that "apparently the State Department needed a housecleaning." The Tampa Tribune hoped that the changes would improve things, but doubted it. "Otherwise," editorialized the Tribune glumly, "the shake-up means only that State Department memos will be handled with great efficiency--and that the mountain of memos will continue to produce the mice of policy." The Christian Science Monitor urged Kennedy to press on: "The streamlining of State ought to continue. And it should reach much further down into the staff."

Tears & Tantrums. Only on the subject of Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles did the second-guessers of the press reach anything approaching accord. This was mostly because the Bowles shift was something less than a shock. Ever since his near expulsion from State last summer, a close shave widely publicized by Bowles himself (TIME, July 28), most of the nation's papers have been fully prepared for the ax to fall. They wondered only why it took so long.

Tears for the displaced idea man splashed on a few editorial pages, notably that of the New York Post, which said that Bowles had shown "signs of becoming the great dissenter in our foreign policy councils, where any President needs vigorous dissent."

Many other papers wondered why the President had not simply fired Bowles instead of finding him a new job as White House representative in Latin American, African and Asian affairs. "Why still keep him around to mess things up?" demanded the New York Daily News, which had repeatedly hollered for Bowles's hide. "JFK would do far better by simply giving the grand and final boot to Administration misfits, beginning with Bowles." Observed the Charlotte, N.C., Observer: "The fellow with the lopsided grin is no longer welcome at the President's table, but he may continue to accept the crumbs." The Detroit Free Press refused to accept the official line that Bowles had not been downgraded, said flatly that "Bowles was fired because he didn't belong and wouldn't quit"; the Chicago Daily News called him "a congenital chatterbox" and a "moony gabbler." Sneered the Miami Herald: "Perhaps now that Mr. Bowles has been shifted out of the top of the department, the public, too, can learn what our foreign policy is."

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