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Fat Volumes. Their fathers then settled down for serious briefings with their opposites in the Johnson Administration. Many of Nixon's appointees to the White House staff met their Johnson-era counterparts and chatted informally in the West Wing basement mess. At the State Department, the Cabinet-to-be and their wives met their own vis-avis socially. Then many of the Nixon nominees went to the incumbents' offices for lengthy discussion of their new responsibilities. They came away with fat briefing volumes prepared for them with part of the $900,000 that Congress authorized this year for the first time to cover the expenses of transition from one Administration to another. Be ginning this week, the new Cabinet members will meet one by one with President Johnson,
Besides announcing his Cabinet, the President-elect added a few more members to his official household last week.
The new director of the Budget Bureau will be Chicago Banker Robert Mayo, 52, who already has an impressive command of the problems he will have to grapple with after Jan. 20: last year he was staff director of a blue-ribbon study of ways to make the federal budget show a truer picture of what the U.S. Government actually spends. James Keogh, also 52, who is on leave from his post as executive editor of TIME, will be a special White House assistant handling a new job in which his function will be, he said, that of "a sort of managing editor, coordinating the research, writing and production process of all statements and speeches coming out of the White House." Dr. Martin Anderson, 32, author of The Federal Bulldozer (1964), a controversial critique of urban renewal programs, will leave Columbia, where he is an associate professor of business, to be special assistant on domestic affairs.
Remote Summit. Late last week, the President, Lady Bird and Daughter Luci waited in the darkness at the White House south portico as the Nixons drew up in a big white Continental on loan from the White House motor pool. Inside, Nixon and Johnson talked in the Oval Office for more than an hour and a half; it was their second encounter since Election Day. They discussed everything from housekeeping in the Executive Mansion to Viet Nam, the Middle East, and a possible summit meeting with the Russians before the President leaves office.
Johnson urged such a meeting, arguing that the Soviets seem genuinely eager to talk about mutual reduction in missile stockpiles, and possibly even to discuss more dramatic bilateral arms cuts. But, said Johnson, he would not go ahead without Nixon's approval. Nixon did not favor the idea, and the chances of a summit before Jan. 20 now seem remote. The two men agreed to meet at least once again before Johnson leaves office.