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Loyal as Lady Bird. At 37, Harry McPherson has Califano's youth and the right regional credentials to boot. A University of Texas Law School graduate, he served Johnson in the Senate for five years, later broadened his experience in the federal establishment with stints at the Pentagon and the State Department. He is also a chief speechwriter, a job whose importance was aptly summarized by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson. "This is often where policy is made," said Acheson, "regardless of where it is supposed to be made." But McPherson, a cultivated, independent man who moves with the Georgetown set, has always kept a certain distance from L.B.J.
As far as the mechanical operation of the White House is concerned, Appointments Secretary Marvin Watson, 42, is top man. He screens 125 to 150 daily requests for appointments with the President, briefs Johnson in advance on visitors, tries valiantly to keep the boss on schedule—no mean task. The Presi dent calls him "my get-me-to-the-church-on-time man." A onetime Baylor University economics teacher and Texas steel executive, Watson neither drinks nor dances, invariably wears a vest and a buttoned-up air of rectitude.
Johnson has effusively described Watson as "the most efficient man I have ever known" and said that he is "as wise as my father, gentle as my mother, and loyal to my side as Lady Bird"—which, from the President, is about as high as hyperbole can soar. But Watson has rarely been an adviser on substantive policy matters, and his concentration on purely administrative functions rules him out as a realistic replacement for Moyers.
Rose Garden Rubbish. Watson's chief rival in the operations department is former NBC President Robert Kintner, 57, who as Secretary of the Cabinet has the task of maintaining smooth relations between the White House and Government departments. He also presides over weekly meetings of the White House staff, seeks to burnish Johnson's TV image, and supervises the writing of what staffers call "Rose Garden rubbish"—the routine speeches that the President delivers to assorted groups that assemble on the lawn adjoining the White House executive wing.
Most other aides are long-odds candidates. Former Magazine Writer Douglass Cater, 43, is considered too much of a specialist, even though his specialty is close to the President's heart: health, education and welfare. John Roche. 43, a former Brandeis political-science professor, has virtually disappeared in the remote East Wing since becoming the resident intellectual. Foreign Affairs Adviser Walt W. Rostow, a brilliant briefing officer and able speechwriter, has less real power than his predecessor, McGeorge Bundy. Press Secretary Christian, though tough and Texan, is relatively new to the federal apparatus.
Combat Commanders. Until a new top hand emerges from the backstage maneuvering that invariably surrounds an upheaval in a President's staff, Johnson is likely to lean more on his "line" officers—the Cabinet secretaries who act, in a sense, as his combat commanders. Among them, three will probably spend more time than ever with the President in the weeks ahead-McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner.