The Great Guessing Game

Next to trying to figure out whether Kennedy or Nixon will win in November, Washington's most intriguing political preoccupation is trying to guess who would people the winning Cabinet. Neither candidate is about to confide his list yet, even if he had one waiting in his inside coat-pocket. Nor is he about to make premature promises, when uncertainty makes all potential Cabinet members campaign hard for the candidate. Sideline guessers can claim no inside dope. But here are some of their choices.

NIXON

Most agree that Richard Nixon would pick some of his Cabinet members from the present Eisenhower Cabinet. His known favorites: Attorney General William P. Rogers, Nixon's closest friend and ally in the Government; Interior Secretary Fred Seaton and Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell, who have sided with Nixon in intra-Administration policy disagreements; and Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson. Nixon also has high regard for Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon and Under Secretary of the Treasury Fred Scribner Jr.

Mentioned most often by the guessers:

SECRETARY OF STATE: Dillon; New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller or ex-Governor Thomas E. Dewey; G.O.P. Keynoter Walter Judd of Minnesota.

TREASURY: Anderson or Scribner.

DEFENSE: Anderson, Rockefeller, or Michigan's Congressman Gerald Ford Jr.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Rogers or Pennsylvania's Congressman Hugh Scott, onetime G.O.P. national chairman.

POSTMASTER GENERAL : Leonard W. Hall, another former national chairman and a top Nixon political adviser.

INTERIOR: Oregon's Mark Hat field or West Virginia's Cecil Underwood, both youthful G.O.P. Governors.

AGRICULTURE : Seaton.

COMMERCE: Kentucky's Senator Thruston Morton, G.O.P. national chairman.

LABOR: Mitchell.

HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE : Businessman Charles H. Percy, chairman of the convention's Platform Committee.

KENNEDY

The word from Hyannisport is that John F. Kennedy would reach far afield for Cabinet choices, and any attempt to predict his Cabinet is futile. This did not stop these guesses:

STATE : Congressman Chester Bowles of Connecticut, who added to the gossip by announcing last week that he would not run for re-election to Congress but would campaign for Kennedy instead; Arkansas' Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; or one of two former U.S. Ambassadors to Russia--Aver ell Harriman or George Kennan. Adlai Stevenson is now being mentioned more often as Ambassador to the U.N., although his old friend Eleanor Roosevelt, who still wants him to be Secretary of State, last week said that "his qualifications are not those needed at the moment in the U.N."

TREASURY : Nobody has any real ideas.

DEFENSE: Missouri's Stuart Symington or Washington's Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson, both Senate defense specialists.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: Connecticut's Governor Abraham Ribicoff, Kennedy campaign strategist; or Denver Attorney Byron ("Whizzer") White, national chairman of Citizens for Kennedy.

POSTMASTER GENERAL: Connecticut's Democratic state chairman, John Bailey.

AGRICULTURE : Iowa's Governor Herschel Loveless, Minnesota's Governor Orville Freeman and Wisconsin's Governor Gaylord Nelson, all of whom had hoped to be tapped for Vice President; also Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey.

COMMERCE: North Carolina's Governor Luther Hodges.

LABOR: Congresswoman Edith Green, state chairman for Kennedy's Oregon forces; New Jersey's Congressman Frank Thompson Jr., nationwide chairman of Kennedy's voter-registration drive.

HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE: Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams of Michigan.

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