Secretary for Domestic Problems

A> Richard Nixon intimates put it:

"When there's trouble, the Boss wants Bob." Nixon all but announced last week that he had chosen his old friend Robert Hutchison Finch for Sec- retary of Health, Education and Welfare. In a jocular speech, Finch, 43, remarked, "I've worked with the President-elect a long time and I can tell you there hasn't been much health in it, there hasn't been much welfare in it, but it's been a damn good education." In the process, he has matured as a consummate politician who is likely to be the next President's No. 1 domestic problem solver and technician.

Help Needed. Few public figures in recent times have been so closely linked as Finch and Nixon. They first met in Washington in 1947 when the Presidentelect was a freshman Congressman and Finch was a congressional aide. It was the start of a political career for which Finch had long prepared.

He had earned a political science degree from Occidental College and received a law degree from U.S.C. in 1951. Shortly thereafter, he entered and lost two congressional races. But between these beatings, Finch developed a lucrative law practice and a solid grounding in California politics. In 1956 he was named chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Los Angeles County. He did well for two years, but after the G.O.P.'s debacle in the 1958 congressional elections, he needed help. At Nixon's request, Finch came to Washington, where he showed his gratitude by running a magnificently organized convention drive to head off Rockefeller in 1960. After Nixon's nomination, Finch served as campaign manager.

Blocked at Home. Finch helped organize Nixon's 1962 gubernatorial campaign, but even as Nixon lost, Finch started to get the political fever again. The political winds at the time were blowing hard toward Ronald Reagan, and a wiser Finch decided to skip the big contest and content himself with the lieutenant-governorship. In a surprisingly large victory, Finch succeeded in outpolling Reagan by about 100,000 votes. All through this period, Finch remained close to Nixon. When Nixon decided to run for the presidency in 1968, Finch was one of the first to start the wheels rolling.

After the election, there was little doubt that Finch, if he wished, could become a member of the Cabinet. The question that remained was one of his own political ambitions. What he really wanted was to return to California and succeed the ailing Senator George Murphy in 1970. But Murphy told Finch that he intended to run for a second term. Blocked at home, Finch decided to cast his lot once more with Nixon.

While the formidable responsibilities of HEW are more than enough, the job may be made even more onerous if

Nixon carries out his reported plan to combine HEW with the Housing and Urban Development Agency to create a new Human Resources Agency.

Thus Finch may be confronting the entire spectrum of problems spawned by urban blight, racial tension and social decay. It will be the new Secretary's task to integrate Great Society programs already in being with the innovations that Nixon hopes to achieve.

Facing Finch is a vast bureaucracy comprising 107,000 employees and a budget of $44 billion. Some of the problems and programs are: - Welfare. Presently a disastrous $4 billion program, surrounded by problems and proposals for change (see TIME ESSAY, p. 25).

> Education. HEW now dispenses about a billion dollars a year in various educational programs in the ghetto. HEW also has the responsibility for ensuring that desegregation deadlines are met, a hot issue in the South and one yet to come in the North.

> Poverty. In this area, the new Secretary will face a rising chorus of liberal demands for more involvement in antipoverty areas.

Finch's political credentials far outweigh his experience in directing social-welfare programs. During his tenure in Sacramento, he chaired an intergovernmental relations committee to bring all the resources of state government to bear on solving minority problems, especially jobs and housing. He worked with the legislature to broaden the power of the state to guarantee bank loans to black entrepreneurs, and mobilized other state agencies to help black business. But these programs, puny by federal standards, were slow to bring change. As Finch complained, "Nobody can move fast enough on this problem."

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