The Romance

It was really turning into quite a romance: the U.S. press, which Democrats have long loved to label Republican, could hardly restrain itself in its fondness for President-elect John F. Kennedy, his policies, his appointments, his family and his pastimes.

As Kennedy parceled out his announcements of Cabinet appointments, he was greeted with a chorus of approbation. The New York Times, whose campaign endorsement of Kennedy had been singularly tepid, warmed to his appointees as the list lengthened: the choice of "Soapy" Williams was merely "good," but Dean Rusk's was "first-rate" and John J. McCloy's "splendid." The Montgomery, Ala. Advertiser took conservative Southern comfort in the new first team: "So far, the Advertiser couldn't be more comforted were Nixon the President-elect and making the Cabinet appointments. Which statement is a horse laugh at the officious, twittering host who self-righteously wear the badge stenciled liberal. Kennedy has fled this loose company." Said the Detroit News: "For good team-picking, we cannot remember an incoming President who has done as well as Kennedy." And Columnist Joseph Alsop almost flung his Cassandra robes into the flames: "Unless the signs deceive, a new Administration with an exceptional level of human competence will be the final result of the methodical manhunt that President-elect Kennedy has been conducting."

"Call It Trivial." Where the pundits of the press have long underscored the importance of ideas and idealism in U.S. Government, now they praised Kennedy for his grasp of parochial politics. Glowed Columnist Doris Fleeson: "Kennedy is yielding every minor point to Vice President-elect Johnson and the Rayburri-Mansfield leadership of Congress as the New Frontiers approach. His apparent strategy is to give them enough rope, which is the classic maneuver of power politics. They are being consulted and shown every deference." Wrote the New York Post's liberal Columnist Max Lerner: "Call it a trivial item, but it is not without its meaning: I am speaking of the ritual President-elect Kennedy has established of meeting the press out in the open with each of his Cabinet appointees, hatless and coatless, in sunshine or frost. It could easily become a fetish. But it is one way, and an elective one, of counteracting the world image of Western decadence that the Communists have tried to spread."

Press approval extended to the President-elect's personal life. After word got out that Kennedy bought suits tailor-made in London, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram clucked reprovingly over criticism of such practice. When Kennedy forswore golf except while on official vacations, the New York Post, which for years had been needling Republican Dwight Eisenhower for his golf, professed itself "dismayed." And the New York Times indignantly blamed the U.S. for this presidential sacrifice: "The nation might well worry its conscience over whether it has been having so much uncharitable fun with presidential golf that it has made a trip around the course a political liability too great for a President to bear."

One Good Resolution. Along the moonlit path, not everything came up roses. By and large, the editorial cartoonists managed to keep their hearts, went on grinding out the mocking, faintly derisive message that is, after all, their stock in trade (see cuts). And from some quarters came harsh words for the President-elect. Principally, they fell around the controversial appointment of Kennedy's brother Bobby, 35, as U.S. Attorney General. Among the dissenters were the liberal New Republic and Nation magazines. The New Republic felt that the Department of Justice "should be kept as free as possible from the suspicion of political taint," and darkly suggested that Bobby's appointment "will give aid and comfort to the enemies of integration." The Nation deplored Bobby's conduct as counsel for the McClellan Committee: "He engaged in personal vendettas; he made it known that he was out to 'get' named individuals." But charges of nepotism were rare, and almost no one saw fit to bring up Bobby's brief service, in 1953, as an assistant counsel under Roy Cohn on the McCarthy subcommittee.

Last week, as the 87th Congress convened and inauguration neared, the pundits, got out their batons to begin the job of conducting the Administration. Walter Lippmann, who during the campaign had frothed with impatience to reach the New Frontier, now, on arrival, thought it best to make haste slowly. "One good New Year's resolution." wrote he, "is to recognize that both at home and abroad the new Administration will need time to get organized. The Kennedy Administration does not have to improvise and to proceed breathlessly to do things. It needs to deliberate carefully, to plan thoroughly, and then to act decisively."

But to Columnist Alsop time was the one commodity that Kennedy lacked: "The vast, revolutionary, potentially destructive forces of our era are now very close to getting wholly out of control. After years of supineness, therefore, the American Government will now have to spring into sudden, vigorous, often risky action on dozens, quite literally dozens, of different fronts."

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