General Watson

The President's praise of dear friends has never been parsimonious, but the plaudits he has showered on W. (for William) Marvin Watson have been extravagant even by Johnson's hyperbolic standards. "The most efficient man I've ever known," the President once said. "As wise as my father, as gentle as my mother, as loyal to my side as Lady Bird," he observed on another occasion. And last week, in announcing Watson's nomination to succeed Lawrence O'Brien as Postmaster General, Johnson said that "it will take at least two good men" to replace him at the White House.

All that efficiency, wisdom, gentleness, loyalty and protean energy have been employed by Watson, 43, in his combination job as office manager, political emissary and personal factotum to the President. Officially titled Appointments Secretary, he has been something of an unsmiling, unverbal, unpublicized Jack Valenti.

An abstemious and devout Baptist, Watson left an executive post with the Lone Star Steel Co. in Dallas three years ago to work full time for the President. Earlier, in 1964, he had helped direct arrangements at the Democratic Convention. He is remembered for his dour directive to office girls, telling them not to spend their lunch hours basking on the Atlantic City boardwalk and not to wear diaphanous blouses.

Wins & Losses. At the White House, Watson gained a reputation for unrelenting economy and secrecy. He restricted the use of Government cars for secretaries who worked late, and tried--unsuccessfully--to limit overtime pay for office workers. He also attempted to devise a telephone monitoring system so that the names of all callers would be noted. Once, following up a chance remark of the President's, he ordered a wall built between the Executive Office Building and the White House to block the vision of nosy reporters. That project was canceled, but Watson did succeed in barring reporters from the low-cost Executive Office Building cafeteria and in restricting their access to E.O.B. officials.

Watson has also been faulted for the deterioration of Democratic organizations around the country. Yet some of the criticism has doubtless been unfair. He has never been a policymaker and, despite his experience as Texas Democratic chairman, never was a political technician of national stature. He functioned strictly as an operations officer who followed his chief's orders with uncritical zeal. Traditionally, a Postmaster General devotes much of his time to high-level politicking. With Johnson out of the race, however, General Watson may be able to give full attention to improving the postal service. It will also give Watson a chance to come out of obscurity and run his own shop.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.