SIX FOR THE KENNEDY CABINET

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

Robert Strange McNamara, 44. "In our business," says Automaker Henry Ford II, "we are lucky if we make the right decision 51% of the time. What I have noticed about Bob McNamara is that he makes an awful lot of right decisions."

The first Henry Ford, unlike his grandson, might have thought scholarly Robert McNamara, president of the Ford Motor Co., an odd choice to be top man in either Dearborn or the Pentagon. San Francisco-born, Bob McNamara was a sophomore Phi Beta Kappa at the University of California. He went on to Harvard Business School for a master's degree, taught there for three years after working briefly for the accounting firm of Price, Waterhouse & Co. Although 4-F (eye trouble) during World War II, McNamara wangled a captain's commission in the Army Air Forces, eventually joined a team of ten young officers who were exploring the then new field of statistical control of vast Air Force supply. At war's end the team sold itself as a package to Ford, soon became known in the company as the "Whiz Kids."

None of the Whiz Kids grew into executive manhood faster than McNamara. Starting as a financial analyst, he was named company controller in 1949, group vice president in charge of all car and truck divisions in 1957. Last month, just one day after Kennedy won the election, McNamara was made the first non-Ford ever to serve as president of the nation's second largest auto firm (TIME, Nov. 21).

Even within the Ford hierarchy, businesslike Bob McNamara was to many little more than an awesome name. Up daily at 6, he was at his desk in Dearborn no later than 7:30, seldom left before 6. He rarely attended the hail-fellow parties other automen love, even more rarely invited the brass to his home--a modest, $50,000 English Tudor house near the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, far from the mansions of most other auto executives in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe. An ardent mountain climber, McNamara reads widely and well (current choices: The Phenomenon of Man, W. W. Rostow's The Stages of Growth), urges his favorites on often bewildered fellow executives. His mind, says a friend who has seen him in Ann Arbor discussions, "is a beautiful instrument, free from leanings and adhesions, calm and analytical." He and his wife Margaret (they have two daughters and a son) are active in Ann Arbor civic work. McNamara is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, practices such stern business ethics that he refuses all Christmas gifts from business contacts, rents a car on vacation rather than borrow one from the company pool. In politics, McNamara is a lukewarm, liberal Republican who often contributes to Democratic candidates. This year he voted for Kennedy.

At Ford, McNamara played a major role in bringing out the compact, best-selling Falcon (and a lesser one in putting together the ill-fated Edsel). He also dismayed car connoisseurs by changing the sporty Thunderbird from a two-seater to a four-seater--a decision, however, that more than tripled "T-bird" sales. As a reward for such judgments, McNamara has become a millionaire, and last year earned $410,000 (about $150,000 after taxes). Last week McNamara announced that in addition to taking a mammoth salary cut to serve as Defense Secretary (statutory pay: $25,000, plus use of a chauffeured Cadillac), he would sell his 24,250 shares of Ford stock, drop options on 30,000 more shares--a potential personal loss of more than $3,000,000. Typically, McNamara turned down the suggestion from a Kennedy staffer that he should sell the stock to his children, thereby avoiding the loss without violating any conflict-of-interest law.

McNamara was suggested for Defense by Manhattan Banker Robert Lovett, himself a onetime Secretary of Defense (1951-53), who had first been offered the job in the Kennedy Administration. The Pentagon, highly fond of retiring Secretary Thomas Gates, sighed at the thought of educating the fourth Secretary in eight years, and some recalled the memory of the lackluster regime (1953-57) of another automan, General Motors ex-President "Engine Charlie" Wilson. (In an echo of Wilson's oft-quoted remark, a newsman asked McNamara: "Do you believe that what's good for Ford is good for the country?" Replied McNamara: "I shall act in the interest of the country. That is all I will say on the subject.")

Detroit associates expect that McNamara will be dutifully efficient in following Jack Kennedy's lead; they also expect that his austere manner and lack of defense experience may lead to personal difficulties until he gets the feel of Washington and his new job. Once he does, it will be clearly good for the Pentagon and the U.S. if the man from Ford can go on making "an awful lot of right decisions."

SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY

Clarence Douglas Dillon, 51. Two days before Jack Kennedy named him Secretary of the Treasury, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Douglas Dillon met in Paris with diplomats from 19 other nations to sign the charter of a new international outfit called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The aims of the charter very much reflect Dillon's own long-range attitudes. The idea is to build a sound international economic structure, with emphasis on free trade and joint Western development of the fledgling nations. In his new Treasury job, Dillon will be looking through the other end of the telescope. He will be charged with building a sound U.S. economy to assure the basis of free world strength. "He knows," said a friend last week, "that if you are successful everywhere else and your financial structure is gone, you're kaput."

Son of a top Manhattan investment banker (Dillon, Read & Co.), Dillon was born in Geneva while his parents were on a Grand Tour, went to Groton and Harvard (magna cum laude, '31). After graduation he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $185,000 and joined the family firm. He went into the Navy as an ensign in 1942, served with the Seventh Fleet, was discharged as a lieutenant commander. Married in 1931, he has two daughters, maintains homes in Washington, New York, New Jersey, Maine and France.

A solid Republican, Dillon wrote foreign-policy speeches for Dewey in 1948, was an early bird for Ike in 1951. After the 1952 campaign, he was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Paris. No post could have made Dillon happier. His family owned one of the finest vineyards in the Bordeaux region, Chateau Haut-Brion, and his cousin, a resident of France who served his adopted country with distinction during the Occupation, was possibly the only native of the U.S. ever elected mayor of a French village. Though Dillon spoke fluent French, he took an hour's instruction daily so that he would not have to use an interpreter.

Nevertheless, the Quai d'Orsay was skeptical of a 43-year-old investment banker who was innocent of diplomatic experience. France was in a state of upheaval: Indo-China was falling, Algeria was on fire, and Suez was threatening. Dillon handled himself with unspectacular competence, won French government gratitude at a parlous moment by proclaiming U.S. support of France's "liberal" aims in Algeria.

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, aware of his own insufficiency in economic matters, recalled Dillon in 1957 to be Deputy Under Secretary in charge of economic planning, gave him control over foreign aid and the tariff and trade programs. In 1958 Dillon's testimony helped persuade a skeptical Congress to pass the longest (four years) extension of the reciprocal trade program in history. He has taken an extremely tough line on the necessity of eliminating discrimination against U.S. exports. His Tokyo speech in October 1959 was the first public U.S. threat of drastic steps to come if the thriving free-world nations did not "move ahead to get rid of outmoded trade restrictions."

Yet when Dillon and Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson flew to Bonn four weeks ago to demand that West Germany pay a bigger part of the Western defense bill, Dillon made it plain that he was out of sympathy with Anderson's gruff demands--a fact that may return to plague him as he takes Anderson's job.

SECRETARY OF LABOR

Arthur Goldberg, 52. Goldberg is skilled at the Cuban dice game of carabino, a collector, in a modest way, of the works of Picasso, Matisse and Shahn, a gluttonous reader of books of all kinds, and a loyal fan of the Washington Redskins. He is also the leading labor lawyer in the U.S., a man who has had a major voice in every significant labor-management decision of the past decade, but who has never been a legitimate member of a labor union. As Secretary of Labor, he may have to make some difficult decisions, such as enforcing Taft-Hartley injunctions in strikes and using his police powers under the Landrum-Griffin law. But Arthur Goldberg has a profound belief in the law--and he plans to enforce it.

The last of eight children of a Russian immigrant family, Goldberg grew up on Chicago's West Side, went to work as a delivery boy in a shoe factory (for $3.80 a week) at the age of twelve, and won his law degree at Northwestern University at 20. He argued his own case so beguilingly before the state Supreme Court that the rules were suspended and he was permitted to take his bar examinations before his 21st birthday.

At first, Goldberg was a young corporation lawyer, but after representing the Newspaper Guild in a strike against Hearst in 1938, he became a labor specialist. (During the war he served with distinction as the OSS contact with Europe's underground labor movement.) In 1948 Goldberg committed himself to the labor movement when the late Phil Murray made him general counsel of the Steelworkers' union. At the wedding of the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. in 1955, he was one of the main marriage brokers. Since then, he has become special counsel (and ex officio policy adviser) to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and on occasion has worn the legal wigs of a dozen big member unions as well.

His many legal chores for the labor movement have paid him handsomely: Goldberg makes more than $100,000 a year, keeps an interest in his Chicago law firm, owns part of a Caribbean hotel chain. Before he takes the oath of office, though, he plans to drop all of his labor affiliations, just as business executives sell their stocks on entering the Cabinet. In addition, he promises never to return to the labor field after his Government service.

Goldberg might very well bring Government into labor disputes more quickly than did his predecessor and close friend, Secretary James Mitchell. But Goldberg claims to have no illusions about the divine rights of the workingman. "What is obviously called for," he told the National Association of Manufacturers last fortnight, "is a greater recognition between management and labor in America of mutuality of interests." In practice, however, Goldberg's interests have been plainly on the side of strengthening big labor.

A smallish, owlish man, Goldberg is as alert as a chipmunk, packs an astonishing amount of stamina and energy (in the thick of marathon negotiations, he switches from Sanka to coffee). Although his manner is amiable, he is as tough as whip leather at the bargaining table.

Jack and Bobby Kennedy, from their vantage point on the McClellan labor-management investigating committee, got to know Goldberg for his personally led fights to expel the Teamsters and other unsavory unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. During the campaign he was a natural choice as a top labor adviser on the Kennedy team, and last week, when George Meany presented a list of five names of top A.F.L.-C.I.O. men as possibilities, the President-elect rejected them all to pick Arthur Goldberg as his personal choice.

SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE

Orville Lothrop Freeman, 42. Orville Freeman's Swedish grandfather homesteaded a farm in Minnesota in the 1850s, but Orville was a city boy, son of a Minneapolis storekeeper. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota just in time to enlist in the Marines at the start of World War II. During the Bougainville campaign, a Japanese bullet ripped through his left cheek, left him unable to speak. As the wound healed--the scar is still visible--Freeman learned to talk again and in the process developed into an uncommonly forceful orator.

After the war, Freeman won his law degree and went to work as an assistant to a rising young political amateur named Hubert Humphrey. As buoyant, garrulous Hubert Humphrey bounced up the political ladder from mayor of Minneapolis to U.S. Senator, dogged, serious, quiet Orville Freeman climbed with him: Freeman became Governor in 1955 and straw-bossed the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which turned out the Republicans who had controlled Minnesota for 17 years.

A fine administrator, Freeman took good care of the state's lagging education and welfare programs; in five years he spent $27 million on college buildings, added 1,500 beds to state mental hospitals, increased state aid to local school districts by $50 per pupil. But Fair Dealer Freeman also pushed property taxes to an alltime state high, ran into trouble last year with the normally cooperative legislature when he tried to install pay-as-you-go income taxes. G.O.P. opponents made much of the tax fight and chided Freeman's poor judgment in sending state militia to close a strikebound Wilson & Co. Inc. meat-packing plant, an action reversed in federal court. Upshot: Freeman lost by 23,000 votes to Republican Newcomer Elmer Andersen, while Friend Hubert Humphrey was winning a third Senate term and Jack Kennedy was carrying the state.

Freeman styles himself as a friend of the farmer, and he is also a friend of the subsidy-loving National Farmers Union. He believes that family farms must be preserved (presumably by subsidies), and farm surpluses must be reduced by overseas sales programs and giveaways, by free school-lunch programs and gifts to depressed areas. He talks in terms of "managed abundance," and if Kennedy pushes through Congress the control-heavy farm program he campaigned with, Freeman will be in command of the greatest federal managing operation short of the Commander in Chief himself.

ATTORNEY GENERAL

Robert Francis Kennedy, 35. The most controversial of the new appointments, Bobby Kennedy's, cannot really be called nepotism, his brother insists, because Bobby has earned it in his own right. Father Joe Kennedy agrees. Bobby Kennedy hesitated a long while, knowing that others would not agree.

Bobby Kennedy has never practiced law privately but, for his age, he has had valuable experience in the Federal Government's legal labyrinth. Soon after he graduated from the University of Virginia law school (1951), he joined the Justice Department's criminal division as a junior investigator, plunged into the ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of Foreign Policy Adviser Owen Lattimore for Communist activities. In 1952 Bobby moved over to be assistant counsel of Joe McCarthy's Senate Investigations Subcommittee, but quit after a much-publicized row with Chief Counsel Roy Cohn. Later Bobby rejoined the committee as minority counsel for the Democratic members, wound up as chief counsel after the Democrats won the Senate in 1954.

For years Bobby was lost in the shadow cast by his big brother, but in 1958 he emerged as a public figure in his own right, as counsel for the Senate labor-management rackets committee. As he unfolded the sordid expose of corruption and crime in the Teamsters and other big unions, Bobby momentarily overshadowed Jack, and his curled-lip intensity and Yankee twang became a television staple. It was a skillful, relentless and aggressive investigation, conducted at the man-killing pace that has become Bob Kennedy's trademark. When Jack decided to run for the presidency, Bobby cheerfully reverted to a supporting role to become campaign manager. The dogged, hair-raising--and winning--battle he directed for 15 months awed and often angered many an older, greyer politician.

The seventh of Joe and Rose Kennedy's nine children, Bobby had to struggle to make his presence felt in the midst of that boisterous tribe (he is himself the head of a family of seven lively, towheaded youngsters). A moody man, Bobby has made many enemies in the course of his public life, though his own subordinates swear by him. The major question about him is whether he has the gentler, mature qualities of patience, second thought and understanding.

Before he took the job, Bobby Kennedy talked at length with outgoing Attorney General William Rogers and an old friend. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. His first act as a prospective Cabinet member was to announce his brother's appointment of Denver Lawyer Byron ("Whizzer") White, 43, University of Colorado All-America, Rhodes scholar and veteran Kennedy campaign worker, as Assistant Attorney General.

Bobby Kennedy has stamina, talent, guts and opportunity. He will need them all. Segregation, civil rights, corruption, racketeering, trustbusting are all passionate subjects, and he can expect to be the target of constant criticism, whatever he does.

POSTMASTER GENERAL

J. (for James) Edward Day, 46. The least known of Kennedy's Cabinet choices. Ed Day, 46, is a light-haired, witty insurance lawyer and a side ring operator in the three-ring circus that is California Democratic politics. Born in Jacksonville. Ill., Ed Day was brilliant enough as a law student to become editor of the Harvard Law Review (1936-37). After graduation, he went to work in one of Chicago's biggest, best law firms (Sidley, Austin, Burgess & Harper), married Mary Louise Burgess, the boss's daughter. At work he became fast friends with a partner in the firm named Adlai Stevenson. After wartime service on Navy subchasers, Day went briefly back to his Chicago practice, quit in 1949 to help out Old Friend Stevenson, newly elected as Governor of Illinois, as an administrative assistant in Adlai's "kitchen cabinet." Day entertained the backroom boys with homemade limericks on Springfield politics, eventually became state insurance commissioner. The job was a stepping-stone to a second career: after Stevenson's presidential defeat in 1952, Day joined the Prudential Insurance Co., rose to one of the top spots (behind President Carrol Shanks), as chief of the firm's western division office in Los Angeles.

When he first went to California, Day declared that he was through with politics, but soon changed his mind. He became a backer of Governor-to-be Edmund ("Pat") Brown, earned an appointment to the finance committee of the Democratic State Central Committee, helped form Democratic Associates, a committee of conservative Democrats who sponsor business-minded candidates for office. Day is articulate and abrupt, an effortlessly efficient manager. No mossback, Day manages to preserve the respect (if not the adoration) of both right and left in California's mixed-up politics.

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