Fresh Faces

The executive team that President-elect George Bush is assembling is starting to look like the cast of a movie: Return of the Republican Retreads. Despite Bush's pledge to name a diverse Cabinet of "fresh faces" in which women and minorities would be strongly represented, his selections so far have come from a narrow field. Of the 15 Cabinet officers and senior officials he had chosen through last week, twelve were either holdovers from the Reagan Administration or people who served under Gerald Ford.

What one aide, echoing the President-elect's characteristic phrase, calls the "balance thing" has bedeviled Bush for a fortnight. Last week he addressed it by including two men with no previous Cabinet experience and a woman among five appointments:

-- Attorney Carla Hills, 54, a former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Ford and a tough negotiator, was named U.S. Trade Representative.

-- Robert Mosbacher, 61, a cautious Texas oilman and longtime Bush friend and political fund raiser, was tapped as Secretary of Commerce.

-- Economist Michael Boskin, 43, of Stanford University, who proposed Bush's "flexible freeze" approach to cutting the federal budget deficit, was picked to chair the Council of Economic Advisers.

-- William Webster, 64, the current CIA director, will remain in his post. But he will lose the Cabinet status he had under Reagan, reflecting Bush's view that the agency should concentrate on providing information rather than influencing policy.

-- Thomas Pickering, 57, a career diplomat who most recently served as Ambassador to Israel, will be United Nations Ambassador.

With last week's appointments, Bush had one woman and one minority -- holdover Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos, a Hispanic -- in his top management team. Bush promises to do more to broaden the mix. His talent scouts have mounted a national drive to recruit more minorities and females for sub-Cabinet and lower-level positions. Vows the President-elect: "Stay tuned. We're only about halfway through."