The closeness of his election victory had wrought a change in Jack Kennedy, and it showed last week. It determined him on a more moderate political course, and it made him more cautious in making his appointments. It had not, however, deprived him of that remarkable self-confidence of a man of 43 taking on perhaps the toughest and most important political office on earth. As rumors of Cabinet appointments swirled like snowflakes, in the midst of it all sat President-elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy—relaxed, and determined not to be rushed into any decisions before he was good and ready.
Not that everything went according to plan. Jack Kennedy's working headquarters was the drawing room of his Georgetown home. There, a wood fire in the grate, a toy donkey belonging to his daughter Caroline in the corner, a book about Congress and Government spending at his elbow, Kennedy met visitors, discussed his problems and his hopes.
Looking beyond his January inauguration, Kennedy has made a major decision: despite his campaign emphasis on a vigorous first 90 days, his incoming Administration will see no dramatic "100 days" in the style or spirit of Franklin Roosevelt. Kennedy feels that the narrowness of his election victory forbids any violent veering in the nation's course, and that, if he received a mandate at all, it was for moderation. He is even relieved by being free to shrug off Democratic extremist elements. The Kennedy Administration plans to present only five or six major pieces of legislation—all dealing with domestic matters and specifically including a minimum-wage increase and medical care for the aged—to the opening Congress.
Cabinet making was proving harder than he expected. Early in the week he named, to no one's surprise, Arizona's Democratic Representative Stewart Udall as Interior Secretary. But Kennedy, as he got down to hard choices, was nonplused to find how few topnotch Cabinet prospects he knew personally outside the Congress, and he had set himself firmly against being pressured into appointing anyone of whose qualifications he was not completely convinced.
State. And his plans ran into snags. His personal favorite for Secretary of State had been Arkansas' Democratic Senator William Fulbright. But almost all of Kennedy's trusted advisers argued that in a world in which Afro-Asians are increasingly important, Fulbright's segregationist background would not do.
It took a while for Jack Kennedy to be persuaded. He was then prepared to offer the State post to Dean Rusk, 51, head of the Rockefeller Foundation and a prospect with impressive credentials—except for the. fact that he is little known to the public, and Kennedy had wanted someone of national reputation.
Rusk, the son of a poor Georgia cotton farmer, became a Rhodes scholar, a political-science professor at California's Mills College. A wartime general-staff officer, he later caught the eye of Secretary of State George Marshall, moved into the State Department as a top Marshall aide. He was a leading architect of the Japanese Peace Treaty, played notable roles in bringing both NATO and the Marshall Plan to life. Now a balding, slow-spoken man whose conversation still carries traces of his native Georgia, Dean Rusk, it was reported from the, Kennedy camp, had only to say yes to become the Kennedy Administration's top Cabinet officer.