THE ADMINISTRATION: Young Man with a Book

Of all the top figures of the Eisenhower Administration, Arthur Larson was the only one to ride to political fame on a book. Larson, brilliant Rhodes scholar and onetime dean of the University of Pittsburgh Law School, published A Republican Looks at His Party when serving as an efficient but little-known Under Secretary of Labor. Ike read the book while recovering from his ileitis operation, was impressed by Larson’s carefully reasoned thesis that “New Republicanism” was the wave of the political future, that New Deal Democrats were as out of tune with the times as William McKinley. After his recovery, Ike called Larson in for long, searching talks, made him a presidential speechwriter, later personally boosted him to the high-candlepower ($21,000) job of director of the U.S. Information Agency.

But Larson’s book was also his ruination. Old Guard congressional Republicans got sore at being classified as fossils. Modern Republicans such as Vermont’s Senator George Aiken disliked having a nonpolitician draw a line across the G.O.P.; so did the Republican National Committee. The Democrats got riled at Larson’s professional stump speeches (“Throughout the New and Fair Deals, this country was in the grip of a somewhat alien philosophy, imported from Europe”), and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson personally took on the task of cutting the hapless Larson to pieces. Thus, when Larson set out to win a $31 million increase to $144 million in USIA funds last spring, the House and Senate contemptuously scissored his appropriations to $96 million.

From that moment on, Larson’s career was a closed book. Last week the White House announced that Arthur Larson, 47, would resign from USIA to become a special White House aide for “countering Soviet propaganda.” His successor: veteran Career Diplomat George V. Allen, 53, former Ambassador to Iran, Yugoslavia, India and Greece, onetime Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and an old hand with Congress.