Musical Chairs on High

In not quite seven years, the Republican Administrations begun by Richard Nixon and continued by Gerald Ford have had an astonishing record of high-level turnovers. The CIA has gone through three directors--Richard Helms, James Schlesinger and William Colby--and will soon have a fourth, George Bush. The FBI has had four chiefs: J. Edgar Hoover, L. Patrick Gray (acting), William Ruckelshaus (acting) and Clarence Kelley. The Office of Management and Budget (formerly the Budget Bureau) has had five directors: Robert Mayo, George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Roy Ash and James Lynn.

Most remarkably, the new nominees will bring to 36 the number of people occupying the eleven Cabinet jobs since January 1969--and that figure does not include the repeat performances of Elliot Richardson, George Shultz and Rogers Morton. The most stable departments have been State (William Rogers, Henry Kissinger) and Agriculture (Clifford Hardin, Earl Butz). All other departments have had from three to six Secretaries:

JUSTICE, six--John Mitchell, Richard Kleindienst, Richardson, Robert Bork (acting Attorney General), William Saxbe, Edward Levi.

COMMERCE, five--Maurice Stans, Peter Peterson, Frederick Dent, Morton, Richardson (nominated).

DEFENSE, four--Melvin Laird, Richardson, Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld (nominated).

TREASURY, four--David Kennedy, John Connally, Shultz, William Simon.

LABOR, four--Shultz, James Hodgson, Peter Brennan, John Dunlop.

HEW, four--Robert Finch, Richardson, Weinberger, David Mathews.

INTERIOR, four--Walter Hickel, Morton, Stanley Hathaway, Thomas Kleppe.

HUD, three--George Romney, Lynn, Carla Hills.

TRANSPORTATION, three--John Volpe, Claude Brinegar, William Coleman.

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