THE PRESIDENCY
Among the senior members of the President's personal staff, the primus inter pares for more than two years has been Bill Moyers. Last week Moyers, 32, was in Uruguay on one of his last assignments, scouting the resort city of Punta del Este as a possible site for April's hemispheric summit meeting. Next week he departs to become publisher of Long Island's daily Newsday. Though Lyndon Johnson has peevishly taken to telling visitors that the capital fairly teems with equally bright young men, he would have to admit that his protege's departure will leave a ragged hole in his inner circle.
Once Moyers is gone, who—if anyone—will become the new primus"? Actually, it may take months for a successor to surface. When he does, he will almost certainly be a versatile, nimble-witted "generalist" rather than a narrow specialist. Johnson, as one aide puts it, likes men who can "go where the ball is." They serve him as a headquarters staff, husbanding his time and refining ideas for his easier digestion.
Wrong Brownsville. One outside possibility is Tom Johnson, 25. No kin, young Johnson is a quick-minded Georgia newsman whose youth stirs in L.B.J. the kind of paternal pride and protectiveness that he sometimes displayed toward Moyers (and, in a better-forgotten era, toward Bobby Baker). An assistant press secretary, Johnson theoretically ranks below both Press Secretary George Christian, 39, and Deputy Secretary Robert H. Fleming, 55. But in some ways he has grown closer to the President than either. Since December, young Johnson has conducted some major briefings while his nominal superior hovered in the background. Moreover, L.B.J. has taken to inviting him for long chats and informal dinners at the White House living quarters.
As of now, the chief contender for Moyer's place is generally considered to be Joseph A. Califano, 35, a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who joined the staff 18 months ago after serving briefly but brilliantly under Defense Secretary Robert Mc-Namara. Califano, who chain-smokes Salems throughout a long dav. occupies the biggest office in the West Wing, where the inner circle is concentrated.
He has become chief overseer of John son's cherished legislative program, as well as his top domestic troubleshooter, handling the Northeast's power blackout in 1965 and the threatened steel strike the same year. Rumpled and slightly roly-poly, Califano has had to overcome some handicaps. For one thing, he was born closer to Brownsville, Brooklyn, than Brownsville, Texas. For another, while he is hardly a yes man, he is still too much in awe of his explosive boss to be a genuinely effective no man, as Moyers could be.