The Nation: Two for One Deal

"I have, you know, done a few things in my life," said Patricia Roberts Harris, when critics complained of her lack of credentials for the job to which Jimmy Carter named her last week: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Hers was quite an understatement. A black Washington lawyer, she knows the worlds of business, academe and government. Moreover, by appointing her, Carter got a kind of "twofer": as a black and as a woman, she is proof that the President-elect is trying to open his Cabinet to both groups.

Harris, 52, was raised in Mattoon, Ill. Her father was a...

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