THE MEN WHO WILL RUN THE U.S.

Defense

On Capitol Hill Melvin Laird has long borne the aura of power, carefully contained but ready for instant application. His close-cropped skull and impassive features give him the forbidding countenance of a Japanese war lord. His steely mind and stinging tongue deepen the impression of a political samurai. Though he is in fact one of the nation's wiliest politicians, in private life he is a puckish, convivial figure.

Laird still lives in his Marshfield, Wis., birthplace, and the rockbed Republican Seventh District there gave him 64% of the vote in November. In his first term in 1953, he managed the unheard of freshman feat of getting on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Once there, he was named to the subcommittee that doles money out to the military, which led to his Pentagon expertise and, inevitably, to his seat on the Nixon Cabinet.

Carleton College-educated, Laird, 46, is one of the G.O.P.'s most considerable intellects. Though generally regarded as a conservative, his political views are hard to categorize. As one observer notes: "He's not antiDemocratic, or anti-this or that wing of the Republican Party. He's bigger than that, and he's friendlier than that." From his first day on the Hill, he has concentrated instead on a wide range of national issues.

After the 1964 Goldwater debacle, Laird recognized the need for change within the Republican Party. He decided --and the party agreed--that the Federal Government should be active in such fields as education and welfare, but only as backstop to states and local communities. A leading backer of the Viet Nam war, he made a calculated switch last year and argued that the Republicans must appear as the party of peace, that Viet Nam was something to hang around Lyndon Johnson's neck. Laird does not plan to visit Viet Nam until his appointment is confirmed by the Senate. As he puts it: "Such visits should be made when they count."

Justice

After his candidate had nailed down the nomination, Nixon Confidant John Mitchell was asked if he had enjoyed campaigning. "No, I have not," he snapped. But now Mitchell, 55, a bril liant bond lawyer who earns $200,000 a year and who became involved in Nixon's campaign when their firms merged in 1967, has taken on the difficult job of putting into practice the campaign or atory about law and order, much of which he was responsible for formulating. The Attorney General-designate gained his legal reputation by arranging municipal bond financing for cities and states across the country. It is possibly the most intricate branch of law, touching on just about everything but criminal and negligence cases.

Son of a Detroit business executive, Mitchell already had adopted his but-toned-up style as a student at Fordham University Law School. A classmate recalls that he was "very closemouthed and got top grades apparently without opening a book." During World War II, Mitchell was commander of a PT boat flotilla in the Pacific--and John Kennedy's superior officer.

Labor

Though among the lesser-known members of Nixon's Cabinet, George Shultz, 48, is highly regarded by labor, management and academe as an arbitrator, administrator and scholar. When the quiet, pipe-smoking father of five was made dean of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business in 1962, a colleague commented that it was "the first time the faculty ever unanimously agreed on anything."

Shultz was graduated cum laude in 1942 from Princeton, where he was a scrappy halfback on the Tiger football team. After wartime Marine Corps service, he earned his Ph.D. from M.I.T., and from 1955 to 1962 was an adviser to two Administrations on fiscal and labor matters.

In presenting his Labor Secretary last week, Nixon described him as "a man who may be able to mediate some of these devastating labor-management crises before they come to the strikes that paralyze our economy." For his part, the greying, soft-spoken professor dislikes Government interference even in major disputes, but "deplores" the trend toward strikes by public employees. A moderate Republican with a catholic concern for social problems, Shultz has long urged business and labor to assume more responsible personnel practices. At Chicago, he pioneered a successful "Careers for Blacks in Management" program, which each year offers eleven scholarships to Negroes, providing tutoring when necessary.

Treasury

When cocktails are passed, David Matthew Kennedy, 63, always orders gin and tonic. Then, with a sly wink, the teetotaling banker instructs the waiter to "skip the gin." A strict Mormon, like his old friend George Romney, Kennedy is also an internationally known fiscal expert as well as one of the nation's most astute and aggressive bankers.

Kennedy had originally decided to make the law his profession and got his degree at night school, but the Depression persuaded him that finance was likely to be a more compelling occupation. He learned the business at the Federal Reserve Board, took a graduate degree at Rutgers, then joined Chicago's Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Co. Rising to president, then chairman, Kennedy peeled the starch off the old institution, returned it to its former first position among Chicago's banks and eighth place nationwide.

Kennedy bristles when he is described as a fiscal conservative. He was at least conservative enough in 1965, though, to turn down Lyndon Johnson when the President offered Kennedy the top Treasury job. His reasons can be found in a message to the bank's stockholders last January: "We are discovering--I hope--that we cannot simultaneously fight a major war, provide economic and military assistance to many other countries and still expect to expand our activities at home." Kennedy has long been a leading critic of unwieldy budget deficits and the unfavorable U.S. balance of payments.

Health, Education and Welfare

One of my passions, said Robert Finch back in 1960 while waging a losing battle for Richard Nixon, "has always been that we must rebuild the Republican Party somewhat closer to the Democrat Party." Today, it seems unthinkable that the cautious California Lieutenant Governor, now 43, would ever utter such a blasphemy. Finch was submerged in politics even as a schoolboy. His father was one of the few Republicans in the Arizona legislature, and dinner-table conversation naturally swung to politics. The family moved to California, where Finch was president of the student body both in high school and at Occidental College, where he majored in political science.

As overseer of the HEW morass, he will be attempting to untangle what the Democrats have wrought. Moreover, as Nixon's closest adviser--their friendship dates back to 1947--he has a broad mandate to advise on virtually all phases of domestic affairs. Not surprisingly, there is already talk in Washington that Finch is being groomed by his mentor to succeed him in 1976.

Housing and Urban Development

George Romney is the best known of Nixon's appointees. He followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a carpenter, and still boasts: "I was a builder from the age of twelve." That skill and his long-standing interest in low-cost housing, plus his years of administrative experience as head of American Motors, may prove valuable in his new job at HUD.

As Michigan's Governor, Romney, 61, has done little to resolve the problems of the poor, particularly in urban centers. Detroit, though admittedly a Democratic bastion, is nonetheless one of the country's most blighted cities. After it was ravaged by the nation's ugliest riots in 1967, Romney decided that it was time to learn all he could about the urban crisis. He took off on a 20-day tour of cities ending with a seminar at Harvard.

He was thus delighted when he was tapped by Nixon, exclaiming "That's what I wanted most." As Secretary of HUD, Romney can be expected to apply his own brand of "Mormon idealism" to the task. While enthusiastically supporting Nixon's program of enlisting business to help provide jobs, training and capital to upgrade slum life, he favors federal aid and incentives to en able the poor to build and own their own low-cost housing. The ghetto dweller, says Romney, is an "untapped asset."

Transportation

When John A. Volpe, 60, moves into Washington's new Department of Transportation building, to be completed by late 1969, he should have no trouble at all finding his way around. One of the contractors for the building is the John A. Volpe Construction Co., a job that had been settled before Volpe was ever considered for occupancy. As a hod carrier, Volpe financed a trade-school education, then, in the depths of the Depression, borrowed $500 to go into the construction business. His company has since blossomed into a multimillion-dol lar enterprise.

A passionate physical-fitness buff, Volpe has needed all the strength he could muster to overcome heavily weighted political odds. In his first try for elective office, Volpe won the Massachusetts governorship in 1960 even as John Kennedy was defeating every other Republican on the ballot. Beaten in 1962, he regained the governorship in 1964 against the Johnson landslide. His fight for more roads as Eisenhower's federal highway administrator, and the 227 miles laid in Massachusetts during his six years in office, have led critics to predict that Volpe will turn the country into a vast cloverleaf. In fact, his first and most urgent concerns will be highspeed train systems, airport congestion and the vexed future of the supersonic transport.

Interior

Walter Hickel, 49, is Alaska's most celebrated entrepreneur. Born on a Kansas tenant farm, the third of ten children, Hickel left home at 19 and wound up in Alaska, where his first job was washing dishes. He started building homes in 1946, then housing developments, then hotels.

As Alaska's second Governor, Hickel took giant steps to develop the state's adolescent economy, insisting that a share of the petroleum extracted from Alaska be refined in the state. By applying pressure in Washington, he won more stringent regulation of foreign boats fishing off Alaska's shoreline. He was successful in attracting new industry and kicking off negotiations with the Federal Government to extend the Alaska Railroad into the mineral-rich Arctic region. He has battled for the economic and civil rights of Alaska's grievously disadvantaged Indians.

Agriculture

The day after University of Nebraska Chancellor Clifford Hardin, 53, was named to Nixon's Cabinet, the college newspaper ran his picture and asked: "Would you buy a used tractor from this man?" Student humor aside, even the farmers gathered in Kansas City, Mo., for the American Farm Bureau convention last week wondered aloud about Indiana-born Hardin and his credentials.

If Hardin is hardly a down-on-the-farm type, his administrative talents are impressive. When hired by Nebraska 14 years ago, he was the youngest chancellor in the university's history. Under him, enrollment has climbed from 7,197 to 29,800, and faculty salaries have soared.

His style is that of a banker; he is, in fact, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo.

Besides his ability to handle money and people, Hardin brings to Washington a doctorate from Purdue in agricultural economics, and a deep concern for the threat of famine, spelled out in a new book, Overcoming World Hunger, which he edited. Introducing his new Secretary, Nixon said that he had searched for a man who, "instead of speaking for the President to the farmers, would recognize that it was his responsibility to speak for the farmers to the President."

Commerce

Subdued and pleasant, Maurice H. Stans, 60, fits into the sprawling Department of Commerce as unobtrusively as a wastebasket. Yet, as he demonstrated during his term as Budget Director under Eisenhower, he can be an authoritative advocate of fiscal conservatism. During the 1959-60 recession, he successfully opposed a tax reduction against the wishes of then Vice President Nixon. He later became one of Nix on's most efficient fund raisers. After leaving home (Shakopee, Minn.) at 17, Stans studied accounting at night, joined Chicago-based Grant & Co. in 1928 and built it into one of the country's leading accounting concerns. Along the way, Accountant Stans took up the unlikely sport of big-game hunting.

Post Office

A millionaire businessman who runs his own company as carefully as he pilots his de Havilland 125 jet, Win ton "Red" Blount has been assigned the government's most inefficient operation. Like so many of Nixon's appointees, Blount (pronounced Blunt) is a self-made man and is currently president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Twenty years ago he invested $28,000 in used earth-moving equipment to begin a small construction firm. Today it is the $6,000,000 Blount Bros. Corp. of Montgomery, Ala. The only Southerner on the Cabinet, Blount, 47, is described as more a realist than an enthusiastic integrationist. Nevertheless, he is respected by federal officials for his quiet work behind the scenes to relax tensions during crises at Selma and Birmingham.

If Nixon adopts the advice of President Johnson's Kappel Commission Report, Blount will be the nation's last Postmaster General. The Commission, headed by Frederick R. Kappel, former A. T. & T. chairman, said that the department was wasting about $1 billion a year. With Nixon's approval, Blount is expected to convert the unwieldy department into a Government corporation to be run by a board of directors. Since the Postmaster General is traditionally the most political member of the Cabinet, Blount's high esteem among Southern G.O.P. leaders is expected to prove another plus for Nixon.

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