(11 of 11)
For the immediate future, Finch will be sorely pinched for funds. The new regime can argue fairly convincingly that no more money is available this year for domestic programs—and even that a period of consolidation will prove beneficial. The showdown will come when Viet Nam spending diminishes. Nixon will then be confronted with demands by the military for hugely expensive new weapons systems. On the other hand, he will have to answer pleas for fiscal economy from men of weight in a conservative coalition. The cities—and Bob Finch—may get lost in between. Sooner or later, Finch will have to make the choices that he was not really confronted with this year. Already the lines are visible within the Nixon Administration. In one camp—the liberal, relatively free-spending one—are Finch, Moynihan, Shultz and George Romney, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. On the conservative, economy-minded side are Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, Bryce Harlow, a presidential assistant with a wide-ranging mandate, and, perhaps the most important, Arthur Burns, counselor to the President and a man of considerable influence within the Administration.
In three months, Finch has already angered some, just as Wilbur Cohen predicted he would. Whatever he says or does, he will anger many more in the next three years. To many liberals and moderates, however, he is the man of promise. Says Hugh Sidey, TIME'S Washington bureau chief, "Robert Finch is what everybody hopes this Administration will be. He is young in thought, liberal in tone, concerned in manner, and vigorous in movement. On the home front, he stands so far as the most inspiring, the most knowing, and the most caring figure in the Administration." HEW demands all those qualities and more. Any man who can use them even halfway successfully will play a special role in shaping the quality of American life.