GETTING TO KNOW THEM

THE Spectacular of the Week, bumping such attractions as the Jonathan Winters Show and ABC's Wednesday-night movie, was the all-network, prime-time Richard Nixon Show, introducing to the nation the twelve men the President-elect has chosen to head the top Government departments. "The people will know more about their Cabinet than they've ever known before," bragged a Nixon staff member. Their debut was telecast live and in color from Washington's Shoreham Hotel, but not without some fancy logistical footwork: on short notice the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association, gathered in annual convention, agreed to relinquish the elegant Palladian Room, more than 100 other public and private rooms, and 14 suites for the President-elect and his entourage of aides and newsmen.

The idea of presenting Nixon's Cabinet nominations on TV had been kicked around by the staff at his Pierre Hotel headquarters in Manhattan for several weeks, and one of its staunchest advocates was Law Partner Leonard Garment--top media adviser in the campaign and one of the men who devised the question-and-answer TV format that Nixon used to good effect around the U.S. CBS Executive Frank Shakespeare, another Nixon TV counselor, hurried back from a Rio de Janeiro va cation early in the week and had the show ready to go on camera in a hectic 48 hours.

Present for Takeoff. Nixon made a few minor fluffs during his unrehearsed half-hour stand-up performance at the Shoreham. He forgot to name Maurice Stans as he introduced his Secretary of Commerce, and he referred to President Kennedy's "first inaugural"; there was, of course, only one. But he spoke without notes or lectern, in marked contrast to the wrap-around electronic prompters Lyndon Johnson regularly uses. Because of the ease and experience that he gained on camera in the 1968 campaign, he plans to make repeated informal use of TV in his Administration to get even closer to U.S. firesides than Franklin Roosevelt did with his celebrated radio chats. As one aide explains: "How else can you get 50 million people?"

The morning after the telecast, Nixon gathered his Cabinet and their wives at the Shoreham for a day-long briefing on the problems the new Administration will face. The wives were invited, Nixon explained, because "I want them to be there on the takeoffs--so that they may avoid a crash landing a little later." (Some of the wives dutifully took notes.) Meanwhile, Luci Johnson Nugent started her opposite number, Tricia Nixon, and an entourage of 33 children aged six to 27--all of them offspring of the incoming Cabinet--off on a VIP tour of Washington that included lunch in the Capitol on the Senate dining room's famed bean soup. The venerable House doorkeeper, William ("Fishbait") Miller, drawled to ten-year-old Jim Hardin: "Your daddy is Secretary of Interior." "Nope," said young Hardin firmly. "Agriculture."

Fat Volumes. Their fathers then settled down for serious briefings with their opposites in the Johnson Administration. Many of Nixon's appointees to the White House staff met their Johnson-era counterparts and chatted informally in the West Wing basement mess. At the State Department, the Cabinet-to-be and their wives met their own vis-avis socially. Then many of the Nixon nominees went to the incumbents' offices for lengthy discussion of their new responsibilities. They came away with fat briefing volumes prepared for them with part of the $900,000 that Congress authorized this year for the first time to cover the expenses of transition from one Administration to another. Be ginning this week, the new Cabinet members will meet one by one with President Johnson,

Besides announcing his Cabinet, the President-elect added a few more members to his official household last week.

The new director of the Budget Bureau will be Chicago Banker Robert Mayo, 52, who already has an impressive command of the problems he will have to grapple with after Jan. 20: last year he was staff director of a blue-ribbon study of ways to make the federal budget show a truer picture of what the U.S. Government actually spends. James Keogh, also 52, who is on leave from his post as executive editor of TIME, will be a special White House assistant handling a new job in which his function will be, he said, that of "a sort of managing editor, coordinating the research, writing and production process of all statements and speeches coming out of the White House." Dr. Martin Anderson, 32, author of The Federal Bulldozer (1964), a controversial critique of urban renewal programs, will leave Columbia, where he is an associate professor of business, to be special assistant on domestic affairs.

Remote Summit. Late last week, the President, Lady Bird and Daughter Luci waited in the darkness at the White House south portico as the Nixons drew up in a big white Continental on loan from the White House motor pool. Inside, Nixon and Johnson talked in the Oval Office for more than an hour and a half; it was their second encounter since Election Day. They discussed everything from housekeeping in the Executive Mansion to Viet Nam, the Middle East, and a possible summit meeting with the Russians before the President leaves office.

Johnson urged such a meeting, arguing that the Soviets seem genuinely eager to talk about mutual reduction in missile stockpiles, and possibly even to discuss more dramatic bilateral arms cuts. But, said Johnson, he would not go ahead without Nixon's approval. Nixon did not favor the idea, and the chances of a summit before Jan. 20 now seem remote. The two men agreed to meet at least once again before Johnson leaves office.

Apart from the summit disagreement, relations between the two men remained cordial, and the monumental job of switching Administrations proceeds with fewer missed beats than ever before. The Nixon headquarters in New York, where the names of job prospects for 2,000-plus second-rung presidential appointments are undergoing intensive screening, resembles the White House more and more every day. It is becoming almost obligatory for foreign bigwigs to call on the President-elect as well as on the President himself: Is rael's General Moshe Dayan came to see Nixon last weekend, and this week the Amir of Kuwait, in the U.S. on the last state visit of Johnson's term of office, was to pay a courtesy call on the President-elect. Gradually but inexorably, the power of the U.S. presidency was shifting from Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon.

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