'Proceed and Be Bold'

THE TRANSITION

Jimmy Carter made unprecedented preparations to assume the presidency. As early as last May, he picked one of his closest aides, Jack Watson, to draw up a sweeping transition plan. TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian spent the week before the election with Watson and was allowed to study some of the documents that were prepared for Carter's reading. His report:

One of the first persons to confer with President-elect Jimmy Carter was Jack Watson, a wiry 38-year-old former Marine whom few had even heard about in the campaign just ended. Yet he had been in charge of one of the matters on which Carter placed the highest priority.

On one occasion Watson had hand-carried to Plains a black-bound memorandum that dealt with the candidate's favorite subject: Government reorganization. The memo had many recommendations--and questions. About one problem Watson wrote Carter: "We have identified 20 priority targets for organization and have liaison teams to go into the departments after the election. The question is whether the teams should begin before you have appointed the new department Secretary. There is a strong case to be made that we should wait." Carter's answer, scribbled in blue ink in the margin, was crisp and clear: "We won't wait. If leader is identified, good; if not, let's move."

While some members of his staff grumbled that campaign money was far too scarce to divert $150,000 into a transition that might never take place, Carter simply told Watson to keep plowing ahead. Working 18-hour days behind his glass desk in Atlanta, Watson had personally interviewed and selected a team of 18 coordinators, most of them in their 30s, to collect the best ideas and judgments they could from top persons around the country. Watson visited with hundreds of top sources: former Cabinet officers, White House staffers, heads of the country's large foundations.

The response was extraordinary. Anthony Lake, a former aide to Henry Kissinger whom Watson asked to head the international security team, received 135 written papers alone. People from Government regulatory agencies, in particular, were outspoken in their advice.

Watson's staff prepared inch-thick option papers on such issues as national health insurance, tax reform, the FBI. Watson wanted true options, not advocacy papers. A man to whom the shadings of language are terribly important, he often bounced back reports with blunt notations like: "This is an unsupported essay. Start over."

A briefing volume was prepared on every department and agency. The State Department volume, for example, contains contingency plans for Yugoslavia, discussions about opening a dialogue with Viet Nam, budget reviews. It reaffirms the need for a strong Secretary who is capable of "withstanding pressures from the munitions industry" and recommends that the national security adviser be confined to staff responsibilities, not policymaking.

In Watson's mind, budget preparations and staffing the Government are Carter's two most pressing responsibilities. For each of the 35 top Government appointments there will be candidates proposed who are described and evaluated by at least four peers. When Watson asked in another memo how much Carter intended to be involved in the selection of the next 200 positions, the candidate answered fully in the margin: "A lot." Watson's staff has put together a talent bank of 7,000 names from which to draw. Ambassadorial and even Supreme Court candidates will be presented to Carter.

Virtually all of his life, Watson has been the peer to watch. The son of a Navy enlisted man, Watson went from high school at Pine Bluff, Ark., to Vanderbilt University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1960. He joined the Marines the same year. A slender man of 150 Ibs., Watson had remarkable stamina: He set two permanent obstacle-course records at the Quantico base, where he became an officer. He bucked for the Marines' most elite outfit, the First Force Reconnaissance company, and had to survive a list of training schools that were excruciating even for Leatherneck standards: cold-weather, escape and evasion, parachute jumping, scuba diving, demolition.

By 1963 he was accepted--where else?--at Harvard Law School. Once again he knew his objective and aimed for it: he wanted to become a trial attorney. He decided to move back to the South and went to an Atlanta law firm. "You can see the pattern with Jack," says one of his associates, Joe Bankoff, "the setting of an objective, and the moving toward it in a way that is not going to excite a lot of opposition." During his term as Governor, Carter became aware of Watson's talents. The young man clearly had a special way with people. When Carter tried to get his reorganization plan through the state legislature, Watson was the smooth arm twister he assigned to persuade the most resistant rural legislators. Then Carter asked him to head up the largest and most controversial of his departments, human resources, which included sensitive programs in drugs, mental health, Medicaid.

Thus it was almost natural last May that Carter would ask Watson to direct his ambitious plans for the transfer of power. When Watson sent his first memorandum, Carter wrote across the top of it: "Proceed and be bold." Watson really liked that. And Carter knew his man. As the President-elect's principal in Washington for the next ten weeks--and probably a lot longer--the bold Jack Watson will certainly take the boss's advice.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.