THE Spectacular of the Week, bumping such attractions as the Jonathan Winters Show and ABC's Wednesday-night movie, was the all-network, prime-time Richard Nixon Show, introducing to the nation the twelve men the President-elect has chosen to head the top Government departments. "The people will know more about their Cabinet than they've ever known before," bragged a Nixon staff member. Their debut was telecast live and in color from Washington's Shoreham Hotel, but not without some fancy logistical footwork: on short notice the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association, gathered in annual convention, agreed to relinquish the elegant Palladian Room, more than 100 other public and private rooms, and 14 suites for the President-elect and his entourage of aides and newsmen.
The idea of presenting Nixon's Cabinet nominations on TV had been kicked around by the staff at his Pierre Hotel headquarters in Manhattan for several weeks, and one of its staunchest advocates was Law Partner Leonard Garment—top media adviser in the campaign and one of the men who devised the question-and-answer TV format that Nixon used to good effect around the U.S. CBS Executive Frank Shakespeare, another Nixon TV counselor, hurried back from a Rio de Janeiro va cation early in the week and had the show ready to go on camera in a hectic 48 hours.
Present for Takeoff. Nixon made a few minor fluffs during his unrehearsed half-hour stand-up performance at the Shoreham. He forgot to name Maurice Stans as he introduced his Secretary of Commerce, and he referred to President Kennedy's "first inaugural"; there was, of course, only one. But he spoke without notes or lectern, in marked contrast to the wrap-around electronic prompters Lyndon Johnson regularly uses. Because of the ease and experience that he gained on camera in the 1968 campaign, he plans to make repeated informal use of TV in his Administration to get even closer to U.S. firesides than Franklin Roosevelt did with his celebrated radio chats. As one aide explains: "How else can you get 50 million people?"
The morning after the telecast, Nixon gathered his Cabinet and their wives at the Shoreham for a day-long briefing on the problems the new Administration will face. The wives were invited, Nixon explained, because "I want them to be there on the takeoffs—so that they may avoid a crash landing a little later." (Some of the wives dutifully took notes.) Meanwhile, Luci Johnson Nugent started her opposite number, Tricia Nixon, and an entourage of 33 children aged six to 27—all of them offspring of the incoming Cabinet—off on a VIP tour of Washington that included lunch in the Capitol on the Senate dining room's famed bean soup. The venerable House doorkeeper, William ("Fishbait") Miller, drawled to ten-year-old Jim Hardin: "Your daddy is Secretary of Interior." "Nope," said young Hardin firmly. "Agriculture."