Sic Transit Bliss

If there were a patent on Republican professionalism, Richard Nixon and Na tional Chairman Ray Bliss would hold a joint title to it. As pragmatic veterans of many campaigns and as sometime al lies -- though never personal friends --the President and the chairman seemed ideal partners to guide the G.O.P.

through next year's congressional election. Thus, when Bliss announced his resignation last week under unsubtle White House pressure, the Democrats were de lighted and many Republicans disturbed.

Bliss has been no ordinary National Committee chief. He already had a na tional reputation for rebuilding the party in Ohio when leaders, including Nixon, called him to Washington after the 1964 Goldwater disaster. Bliss's talent for organization and avoidance of the ideo logical disputes that had fragmented the party played a large part in the Republican renaissance of 1966 and 1968.

His well-heeded exhortation to party workers was: "Build! Build! Build!"

No Showboat. During the 1966 cam paign, when Nixon was stumping the country for G.O.P. candidates, coolness developed between them. Nixon wanted the National Committee to furnish a private jet plane. Bliss demurred. If one potential presidential candidate got that kind of help, he argued, they all should.

Nixon did not take the rebuff well. Yet last summer, the National Committee, presumably with Nixon's blessing, re-elected Bliss and gave him a $10,000 raise in salary (to $40,000).

It was immediately after the election that Nixon aides passed word that the President-elect wanted a new man. The ostensible reason: the party needed an articulate, attractive spokesman to project vitality. Blind in one eye, squat of build, chubby of face and soporific as a speaker, Bliss, at 61, could hardly meet that requirement. Nonetheless, the rationale for wanting him out was somewhat specious. National chairmen rarely serve as showboats, and when a party controls the White House, its public image lives there. After Republican Governors and national committeemen protested, Nixon eased off. In January, he invited Bliss in for a chat, which ended with the announcement that the chairman would stay on indefinitely.

Brother's Advice. The rumors generated by Nixon intimates did not cease, however. Then a new element materialized in the person of Murray Chotiner, 59, an old Nixon crony. The California lawyer had worked in Nixon campaigns through 1952, later became implicated in a federal conflict-of-interest investigation. Though he had not been visible in the Nixon entourage for years, all at once he was installed in an office five floors above the G.O.P. Com mittee headquarters. Calls from the White House came in on Chotiner's phone, not Bliss's. Unwilling to continue as a figurehead, Bliss chose to return to his Akron insurance business.

No one imagines that Nixon will now give the job to Chotiner. But, as Chotiner tells it, he will become the operating director while a new chairman concentrates on "meeting the public." Nixon's first choice to take over when Bliss leaves in April is Maryland Congressman Rogers Morton, who was convention floor manager for Nixon in Miami Beach and is a likely candidate for Senator next year. Morton's brother Thruston, a former Senator and G.O.P. national chairman himself, is advising Rogers to reject the job if Chotiner remains a power in the National Committee.

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