The Manner of Their Going

The graceful goodbye is not one of Lyndon Johnson's fortes. In the past three years, several dozen of his top aides and administrators--including such onetime prodigies and proteges as Bill Moyers and Jack Valenti, Robert McNamara and Gardner Ackley--have resigned or been reassigned. And often the manner of their going has left an aftertaste of malice and misunderstanding.

Last week the Texas White House announced that Budget Director Charles L. Schultze, 43, will return to academic life after finishing work on next year's administrative budget of an expected $145 to $150 billion. Inevitably, Washington seers concluded that his resignation, on the heels of Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Ackley's appointment as ambassador to Rome, was intended to appease House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills and thus help to resuscitate the Administration's tax rise.

That impression was mistaken. Word of Schultze's resignation was leaked prematurely one night to reporters in Washington, and it seemed that L.B.J. was letting his Budget Director go without the customary amenities. In fact, Johnson had written a "Dear Charlie" note of "deepest thanks and warmest admiration," but reporters did not know this, and rumors of a rift spread.

Encyclopedic Mastery. Actually, Schultze had told the President last summer that he wished to resign from the grueling job he had held for two years. It took Johnson's persuasiveness to induce him to stay through preparation of the new budget. Schultze, as the President knew, was the Administration's most effective economic spokesman on Capitol Hill. Even Wilbur Mills describes him as "one of the most brilliant economists I ever met."

With an encyclopedic mastery of budget detail, Schultze had the difficult task of analyzing federal spending programs before an economy-minded Congress. Although the sharp rise in war spending dominated his attention, Schultze was still able to undertake a major streamlining of the Budget Bureau and to promote the cost-effectiveness techniques that McNamara introduced at the Pentagon. Though he could have commanded $100,000 a year, Schultze accepted modestly salaried posts as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and part-time professor at the University of Maryland.

Named to succeed Schultze was an other New Economist--Charles J. Zwick, 41, a former Harvard professor and Assistant Budget Director for two years. An expert in Government reorganization, Zwick aims to consolidate and strengthen the programs that Johnson has won from Congress.

State Department Chief of Protocol James Symington, 40, also bade farewell last week. He wants to run for the House as a Democrat in Missouri's traditionally Republican Second District. It might be an uphill fight, but he knows a few things about Missouri politics, having twice helped run successful campaigns for his father, Senator Stuart Symington. Symington's replacement at State will be U.S. Ambassador to Spain Angier Biddle Duke, who held the protocol post for four years before going to Madrid in 1965.

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