Pragmatist for Budget

"Current Problems in National Economic Policy" was the title of the seminar that Professor Kermit Gordon, 46, was all set to teach at Williams College next year--after a planned January resignation from President Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisers. But last week, when David Bell was tapped to run AID, Gordon was named director of the Budget Bureau--and assigned official responsibility for grappling with the very problems that he had been planning to examine in leisurely classroom discussion.

A graduate of Swarthmore and a Rhodes scholar, Gordon won high Kennedy marks during his 22 months on the council while on leave from Williams. He cannot be tidily classified as belonging to any particular school of economic thought--indeed, like so many pragmatic New Frontier economists, he has a knack for saying vague things precisely. "Of course," he says, "I believe in the positive use of fiscal policy to help in the stabilization of the economy." But he prefers to let ''the virtues of the free market system" solve economic problems--at least whenever free enterprise seems feasible.

He is, as one admiring New Frontier colleague says, best described as a "hard-headed liberal."

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