The Week

Washington Post headline: “Cabinet Score to Date: White Males 10, Women 0, Minorities 0.” Kwitcher-bitchin, folks. After everything you said about him, it was mighty conciliatory of Reagan not to name the Grand Imperial Wizard to anything.

While the press muttered anxiously about the big names in the Reagan Cabinet (it’s Tower for Defense, and Shultz for State; no, make that Weinberger for Defense, Haig for State), the Reagan transition team has been assembling recommendations for the three hundred posts just below Cabinet level, and pools of names for the two-thousand-odd positions just below them. These are the wood-choppers and water-haulers of the Administration; carelessness in picking them now can mean headaches for the next four years. Soitisa matter of some concern that the Office of Presidential Personnel within the transition team is such a mixed bag. Pendleton James, director of the office, is a professional corporate headhunter, formerly with the executive search firm of Heidrick and Struggles. Many of his underlings are fellow technicians or veterans of the GOP’s Rockefeller wing. “I’ve been in this business thirty years,” one conservative congressman complained to Ed Meese, “and I don’t know these people. What’s going on?” Conservatives, meanwhile, have been coming aboard piecemeal—a process of expansion which, if it continues unchecked, may make the whole operation so bloated that it will collapse under its own weight.

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Washington Post headline: “Cabinet Score to Date: White Males 10, Women 0, Minorities 0.” Kwitcher-bitchin, folks. After everything you said about him, it was mighty conciliatory of Reagan not to name the Grand Imperial Wizard to anything.

While the press muttered anxiously about the big names in the Reagan Cabinet (it’s Tower for Defense, and Shultz for State; no, make that Weinberger for Defense, Haig for State), the Reagan transition team has been assembling recommendations for the three hundred posts just below Cabinet level, and pools of names for the two-thousand-odd positions just below them. These are the wood-choppers and water-haulers of the Administration; carelessness in picking them now can mean headaches for the next four years. Soitisa matter of some concern that the Office of Presidential Personnel within the transition team is such a mixed bag. Pendleton James, director of the office, is a professional corporate headhunter, formerly with the executive search firm of Heidrick and Struggles. Many of his underlings are fellow technicians or veterans of the GOP’s Rockefeller wing. “I’ve been in this business thirty years,” one conservative congressman complained to Ed Meese, “and I don’t know these people. What’s going on?” Conservatives, meanwhile, have been coming aboard piecemeal—a process of expansion which, if it continues unchecked, may make the whole operation so bloated that it will collapse under its own weight.