Back-Room Boy Up Front

For all their divided loyalties and divergent styles, Lyndon Johnson and President Kennedy's political legatees have apparently reached a working truce. Bobby Kennedy, who earlier this year was shafting the Johnson Administration for deepening the U.S. military involvement in Viet Nam, of late has had only praise for the President's policies. While most other top advisers to J.F.K. have now left the White House, one of the most valued of all has stayed on to play an even more influential role in the Johnson Administration.

He is Larry O'Brien, John Kennedy's most artful campaign manager and Capitol Hill strategist, who has since shouldered the bigger burden of pushing Johnson's mighty legislative raft through Congress.

Last week L.B.J. showed his own high opinion of J.F.K.'s key aide by naming him to the politically potent Cabinet post of Postmaster General. The appointment drew added piquancy from the fact that O'Brien wanted to give up his White House duties even before John Kennedy's death, and in recent months had been hotly wooed to direct the top-to-bottom reorganization of the Massachusetts Democratic machine sought by yet another Kennedy--Senator Teddy. In any case, Larry had let it be known that he would definitely leave Washington when the present Congress adjourns. By putting him in the Cabinet instead, Johnson thus wrested from the Irish Mafia a man who might have loomed as large in Teddy's career as he had in Jack's--and plainly has plenty of loom in Lyndon's plans.

Warmer Warsaw? O'Brien succeeds John A. Gronouski, whose fortune is in his patronym. A former Wisconsin tax commissioner, he was given the job by J.F.K. because of his appeal to the Polish vote--though he can barely speak the language. Johnson appointed Gronouski Ambassador to Poland, replacing Career Diplomat John Moors Cabot. A newcomer to foreign affairs, Gronouski, 45, is nevertheless the grandson of a genuine Polish immigrant; his mission in Poland will attempt to thaw the chill in Washington-Warsaw relations--which are still warmer than U.S. dealings with any other Communist capital--that set in after the U.S. intensified its military response in Viet Nam.

Of all Kennedy men who suddenly became Johnson retainers in 1963, Larry O'Brien's prospects for advancement hardly seemed the most radiant. While he was a relative stranger in 1961 to the complexities of Capitol Hill--though hardly to politics--O'Brien was largely responsible for passage of the few bills that J.F.K. managed to get through Congress. His success sorely dismayed Vice President Lyndon Johnson, the old maestro of Senate consensus, who had naturally expected to be No. 1 New Frontiersman on Capitol Hill. Yet, to O'Brien's amazement, on the plane back from Dallas after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson asked him to stay on--and promised him "a blank check."

Bridging the Gulf. Despite Johnson's reputation for pressuring Congress, he has scrupulously observed his pledge to O'Brien, twists the Congressional arms of Larry's choosing and, mostly, at Larry's request. With an expanded corps of operatives--five men for floor work, twelve women researchers and secretaries--O'Brien has shown unprecedented agility in spanning the hazardous chasm between the Hill and the White House--maintaining what Bryce Harlow, President Eisenhower's legislative man, called "an ambulatory bridge across a constitutional gulf."

O'Brien is, for all his skill, essentially a back-room boy. The Great Society's architect and principal prophet has been, and will continue to be, Lyndon Johnson, and his extraordinary legislative record is 90% his own. The importance of O'Brien's 10% was demonstrated nonetheless by the fact that the entire Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, had planned an unprecedented party to bid him farewell when--as he fully expected--he quit Washington this fall.

General Delivery. With this year's congressional blitz all but completed, Johnson's challenge next year will be to preserve all he can of his Democratic congressional majority. O'Brien will have a critical part in that effort, too, both as campaign strategist and patronage dispenser, with 35,000 appointive postmasterships and 33,000 rural letter-carrier jobs at his disposal.

Larry's move out front may also benefit the nation. So highly do Congressmen regard his drive and organizational talents that many last week were already looking forward to better postal service under "General" O'Brien, as his 600,000 employees will now call him. After all, without reasonably efficient mail, how could its citizens ever convince each other that Lyndon's Society was Great?

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