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Crusade for Trade. Dillon is also attempting to stem the outward flow of U.S. gold, but admits that current efforts to prevent any further drain on Fort Knox are "not satisfactory." This year, thanks, among other things, to a one-shot $587 million prepayment of postwar loans by West Germany, the payments deficit (which last year ran to $1.5 billion) may be brought close to a balance. But to keep a permanent balance, the U.S. will have to undertake a crusade for trade. "We have got to keep our export total high," Dillon says. "We can do this by keeping our prices as competitive as possible, and this will mean a restraint on wages and prices. We have also got to watch our overseas expenditures as carefully as we can. Some of these expenditures are necessary for security, but there are ways in which the military can cut down."
At Treasury, Dillon pays lip service to the work-all-night attitude of the Kennedys, but gets his job done without too great a sacrifice of his own long-held habits. He reads three newspapers before reaching his desk by 8:45. Dillon is notoriously demanding of subordinates, often interrupts oral reports with a sharp "That's not what I've asked for."
Down in the 80s. Doug Dillon tries to get home by 7:30; his Washington residence since 1957 has been an embassy-sized villa in Washington's Kalorama section, lavishly decorated with 18th century French furniture, his wife's collection of porcelain, paintings by Renoir and Monet.*Sundays, Episcopalian Dillon worships at Washington's National Cathedral, makes fitful efforts to keep his golf game down in the 80s. He also does his heavy reading on weekends; aides have come to dread Monday mornings, when the Secretary invariably shows up with a dozen or more memos with demands for immediate action.
Despite his quiet success, Banker-Diplomat Dillon has not yet stilled all the doubts and criticisms about his fitness for the Treasury job. On Capitol Hill, a few G.O.P. Congressmen joke bitterly about a "Dilloncrat"—meaning "a Republican big spender." The cautious Fed suspects that Dillon does not worry enough about the inflationary danger that trails after big deficits. "The Treasury line now is not so clearly defined as in the past." complains one member of Ike's Treasury team. "When we were over there, maybe we were a bunch of fuddy-duddies. But "by God, there was no question where the line was. Certain things were sin."
"Multiple Objectives." Dillon's defenders—and the Washington woods are full of them—answer that such criticisms are beside the point. In the new Administration's view, Treasury no longer has the negative function of just guarding the dollar. "Treasury policy." explains one White House adviser, "is moving toward multiple objectives. It seeks a sound dollar, a reasonable balance of payments, the checking of inflation, full employment, a reasonable rate of growth. What Dillon stands for is the best possible performance in all directions."