Crisis in Staffmanship

If all the top White House staffers who have, in the last few weeks, expressed publicly or privately their desire to get out, actually do resign, there will be only one left. That will be McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant for National Security, who obviously figures that if he hangs around long enough he will get Dean Rusk's job. As for the others:

> Larry O'Brien and Kenny O'Donnell, the last of Kennedy's Irish Mafia, served Lyndon loyally and effectively during the campaign but have quitting on their minds.

> Bill Moyers, 30-year-old lay preacher who took over as staff supervisor after the enforced leave-taking of Walter Jenkins (who, it was reported last week, is out of the hospital and feeling much "improved" at home), suffers from bleeding ulcers, is anxious to get back to the Peace Corps job he once held.

> Jack Valenti, the Man Friday most often seen whispering into Lyndon's ear, has professed that he would like to get back to Texas to make some money.

>George Reedy, press secretary, seemed about to fall apart trying to keep up with Johnson in the final days of the campaign. Reedy would like to stay on but not at the breakneck pace of the past few months.

> Horace Busby, speechwriter, makes few bones about his intention to return to private life.

> Richard Goodwin, speechwriter and general idea projectionist, was a Kennedy discovery. But at 32, Goodwin is a young man in a hurry, and he has a highly developed sense of his own importance. Goodwin is still smarting at Lyndon's recent insistence that he, the President, writes every word of his own speeches.

And so it goes. Some of these men will, under Johnson's blandishments, change their minds. But more important is the fact that Johnson has no knack for getting or keeping good staffers around him. Last week he called on Washington Lawyer Clark Clifford, who helped Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy in the White House, for advice and assistance on the staff situation.

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