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While he has accepted the Government's responsibility for society's problems, Finch, as a card-carrying Republican, believes in a greater role for individuals and nongovernmental agencies. "In the middle third of this century," he says, "social problems were looked upon as the exclusive province of the Federal Government. In the final third, we are going to have to mobilize resources far beyond mere federal dollars if we're going to deal effectively with those problems. We're going to have to engage a full cross section of the entire private or nongovernmental sector, individuals, institutions and other groupings alike. I think the Republican Party is far more likely to achieve that than the Democratic."
Absolutely Sweet
In outlook more than in anything he has planned or done in his short tenure, Finch gives promise of being a good, perhaps even a great general in domestic battle. On the surface he is super-ordinary, the all-American boy grown up. Blond, blue-eyed, ruggedly good-looking at six feet, he has been an Eagle Scout, prizewinning college debater, Marine officer. He is a devoted father of four (three girls, 18, 13 and 11, and a boy, 15) and the husband of his college sweetheart.
"Bob doesn't have any enemies," says one of the President's aides. "He's just too nice a guy. He walks into the room, and you just instantly like him. Even people who disagree with him—and I'm one—think he's a charming character." There was reason enough to believe that he and Pat Moynihan, head of the President's Council for Urban Affairs, would fight for dominance in the domestic sphere. Both extremely strong-willed men, they have instead developed a close rapport. "Bob Finch," says Moynihan, his Irish speaking, "is an absolutely sweet man."
Born in Tempe, Ariz., a little agricultural town south of Phoenix, Finch was introduced early to political life by his father, a cotton farmer and one of a handful of Republicans in the state legislature. Three bad harvests in a row forced a move across the state line, and in 1930 Robert Finch Sr. took a job as a sales manager in San Francisco. Two years later, the family transferred to Southern California, where his son has lived ever since. Young Bob was deeply influenced by his father, and when he died of cancer in 1941, Finch struck out almost fanatically to fill the void in his life. Emulating his father, Bob became a fervent campus politician at Inglewood High, winning his junior and senior class presidencies, and later at Occidental College, where he organized a Republican club. No one doubted that he would make politics his career.