Filling More Jobs

As Richard Nixon labored over his inaugural address last week, a group of three top aides headed by Attorney General-designate John Mitchell carried on with the task of screening candidates for the 6,500 jobs within the President-elect's gift. Some choices:

> Publisher Walter Annenberg (the Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, the Daily Racing Form), 60, will reportedly get the prized job of Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The London appointment has often gone to a wealthy campaign supporter--to Joseph Kennedy under F.D.R., to John Hay Whitney under Eisenhower--and Annenberg fills that bill precisely. His Triangle Publications has become a $200 million-a-year empire; Annenberg is known in Philadelphia as a tough man to cross. He is an old, trusted friend of Nixon, and the President-elect stayed at his Palm Springs home shortly after the election.

> Oklahoman Bud Wilkinson, 52, ex-football coach, will be a special consultant on reducing the number of proliferating presidential commissions. A TV sports commentator, Wilkinson moderated a number of Nixon's local TV question-and-answer programs during the campaign. Wilkinson's one venture into elective politics was Oklahoma's 1964 Senate race; he lost in an upset to Fred Harris, who will take over as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

> New Yorker Emil ("Bus") Mosbacher Jr., 46, champion U.S. yachtsman, will be chief of protocol. A wealthy investor in real estate and oil, Dartmouth-educated Mosbacher has twice skippered a successful America's Cup defender: Weatherly against Australia's Gretel in 1962 and Intrepid against the 1967 Australian challenger, Dame Pattie. The Potomac is no place for a blue-water sail or but, said Mosbacher, "Maybe I can sail a dinghy down there."

>Harvard Professor Hendrik Houthakker, 44, a specialist in international economics, was named to the Council of Economic Advisers. The appointment was applauded by his academic peers. Said Democrat John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard colleague: "If you're going to have a conservative, it's good to have a competent one."

> Georgian Phil Campbell, 51, was appointed Under Secretary of Agriculture. Campbell, his state's agriculture commissioner since 1955, was one of several Georgia officials who deserted the Democrats for Nixon in the campaign. His appointment is a clear signal to the South that its support for the G.O.P. will not pass unnoticed.

> North Carolinian Mrs. Elizabeth Duncan Koontz, 49, accepted the relatively minor post of director of the women's bureau in the Department of Labor. She is now president of the National Education Association, the world's largest professional organization. Obviously alluding to other Negroes who have turned down posts in the Nixon Administration, Mrs. Koontz said: "I've taken this job because I'm an American citizen who wants to improve our society, and that's a job for all American citizens."

Nixon also resolved, at least for the time being, the fate of Republican National Chairman Ray Bliss. Nixon was widely reported as wanting to dump Bliss for past slights, but Bliss's organizational talents are much admired within the party, and Republican leaders around the land rallied to his support. Looking like a happy old owl, Bliss said in Manhattan that the President-elect "expressed complete satisfaction with the job being done by me."

There is a pattern to the people named to the Nixon Administration to date. "Those who have come front and center tend to be bland," reports TIME Correspondent Simmons Fentress. "That doesn't worry the Nixon people at all. This is not an exciting crowd. Its campaign was not exciting, and its government is not apt to be. It recruits by the yardsticks of competence and loyalty and public acceptance. It is not trying to stir or to amuse. Competence may be the goal, but that doesn't mean politics is overlooked."

The job-filling process has been slow. There are more than 300 slots at the level of Assistant Secretary or above in the twelve Cabinet departments, and ten days before inauguration only a dozen had been filled. No one is seriously worried, however. As Nixon Spokesman Ronald Ziegler told a doubting newsman last week, "We will be able to run the Government."

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