In Pursuit of a Primus

THE PRESIDENCY

Among the senior members of the President's personal staff, the primus inter pares for more than two years has been Bill Moyers. Last week Moyers, 32, was in Uruguay on one of his last assignments, scouting the resort city of Punta del Este as a possible site for April's hemispheric summit meeting. Next week he departs to become publisher of Long Island's daily Newsday. Though Lyndon Johnson has peevishly taken to telling visitors that the capital fairly teems with equally bright young men, he would have to admit that his protege's departure will leave a ragged hole in his inner circle.

Once Moyers is gone, who--if anyone--will become the new primus"? Actually, it may take months for a successor to surface. When he does, he will almost certainly be a versatile, nimble-witted "generalist" rather than a narrow specialist. Johnson, as one aide puts it, likes men who can "go where the ball is." They serve him as a headquarters staff, husbanding his time and refining ideas for his easier digestion.

Wrong Brownsville. One outside possibility is Tom Johnson, 25. No kin, young Johnson is a quick-minded Georgia newsman whose youth stirs in L.B.J. the kind of paternal pride and protectiveness that he sometimes displayed toward Moyers (and, in a better-forgotten era, toward Bobby Baker). An assistant press secretary, Johnson theoretically ranks below both Press Secretary George Christian, 39, and Deputy Secretary Robert H. Fleming, 55. But in some ways he has grown closer to the President than either. Since December, young Johnson has conducted some major briefings while his nominal superior hovered in the background. Moreover, L.B.J. has taken to inviting him for long chats and informal dinners at the White House living quarters.

As of now, the chief contender for Moyer's place is generally considered to be Joseph A. Califano, 35, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who joined the staff 18 months ago after serving briefly but brilliantly under Defense Secretary Robert Mc-Namara. Califano, who chain-smokes Salems throughout a long dav. occupies the biggest office in the West Wing, where the inner circle is concentrated.

He has become chief overseer of John son's cherished legislative program, as well as his top domestic troubleshooter, handling the Northeast's power blackout in 1965 and the threatened steel strike the same year. Rumpled and slightly roly-poly, Califano has had to overcome some handicaps. For one thing, he was born closer to Brownsville, Brooklyn, than Brownsville, Texas. For another, while he is hardly a yes man, he is still too much in awe of his explosive boss to be a genuinely effective no man, as Moyers could be.

Loyal as Lady Bird. At 37, Harry McPherson has Califano's youth and the right regional credentials to boot. A University of Texas Law School graduate, he served Johnson in the Senate for five years, later broadened his experience in the federal establishment with stints at the Pentagon and the State Department. He is also a chief speechwriter, a job whose importance was aptly summarized by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. "This is often where policy is made," said Acheson, "regardless of where it is supposed to be made." But McPherson, a cultivated, independent man who moves with the Georgetown set, has always kept a certain distance from L.B.J.

As far as the mechanical operation of the White House is concerned, Appointments Secretary Marvin Watson, 42, is top man. He screens 125 to 150 daily requests for appointments with the President, briefs Johnson in advance on visitors, tries valiantly to keep the boss on schedule--no mean task. The Presi dent calls him "my get-me-to-the-church-on-time man." A onetime Baylor University economics teacher and Texas steel executive, Watson neither drinks nor dances, invariably wears a vest and a buttoned-up air of rectitude.

Johnson has effusively described Watson as "the most efficient man I have ever known" and said that he is "as wise as my father, gentle as my mother, and loyal to my side as Lady Bird"--which, from the President, is about as high as hyperbole can soar. But Watson has rarely been an adviser on substantive policy matters, and his concentration on purely administrative functions rules him out as a realistic replacement for Moyers.

Rose Garden Rubbish. Watson's chief rival in the operations department is former NBC President Robert Kintner, 57, who as Secretary of the Cabinet has the task of maintaining smooth relations between the White House and Government departments. He also presides over weekly meetings of the White House staff, seeks to burnish Johnson's TV image, and supervises the writing of what staffers call "Rose Garden rubbish"--the routine speeches that the President delivers to assorted groups that assemble on the lawn adjoining the White House executive wing.

Most other aides are long-odds candidates. Former Magazine Writer Douglass Cater, 43, is considered too much of a specialist, even though his specialty is close to the President's heart: health, education and welfare. John Roche. 43, a former Brandeis political-science professor, has virtually disappeared in the remote East Wing since becoming the resident intellectual. Foreign Affairs Adviser Walt W. Rostow, a brilliant briefing officer and able speechwriter, has less real power than his predecessor, McGeorge Bundy. Press Secretary Christian, though tough and Texan, is relatively new to the federal apparatus.

Combat Commanders. Until a new top hand emerges from the backstage maneuvering that invariably surrounds an upheaval in a President's staff, Johnson is likely to lean more on his "line" officers--the Cabinet secretaries who act, in a sense, as his combat commanders. Among them, three will probably spend more time than ever with the President in the weeks ahead-McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner.

As Moyers' leave-taking approaches, rumors have blossomed that McNamara may leave the Pentagon to become the President's executive assistant, with powers akin to those that Sherman Adams exercised with flinty authority under Dwight Eisenhower. That prospect is, at best, remote. McNamara and Johnson are almost certainly too strong-willed to operate harmoniously under one roof. With the Potomac River between them, they get along swimmingly.

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