THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Obfuscation? Dumb Insolence?

The Presidency

Joe Califano, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, does not have any armies, embassies or national forests, but he may be emerging in the current season as the second most important man in Washington.

He is tinkering with the heart, mind and body of America. In the absence of a threat of war, and with most pocketbooks reasonably well filled, those subjects are looming again as pre-eminent national concerns. Almost every day Califano is in the midst of the skirmishes on abortion, student loans, school desegregation, treatment of the handicapped, hospital costs, welfare reform, social security, smoking, drug control and dozens of other issues that touch the daily existence of every one of the 218 million people in the U.S.

Califano presides over $182 billion, 36% of the federal budget. There is a certain clear message in those figures. Mayors and Governors now hover like bees around Califano. Welfare and school money and Social Security benefits help ease the local burdens.

Califano may be what a Cabinet officer should be all about: sometimes defying special interests, his own bureaucracy, even White House aides, but always in resonance with the President.

In normal political terms, Califano’s job would be considered wall-to-wall frustration. “I love it,” he says with a grin, running his stubby hand through his hair as he prepares to rush off to another fray. He is constantly visible, magically at the focal point, part family counselor, physician, lawyer and preacher.

“This is where it is at,” Califano declared happily last week. That was after being told by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan that his department was guilty of “dumb insolence” before the Congress, that it had a tradition of “obfuscation, frequently lying, but in any case avoidance of the issue.” But so much for one day’s flak. The very next morning he was at the White House with seven key members of Congress announcing the new college-aid proposals, and Kentucky’s Carl Perkins clapped him soundly on the back and declared, “I think he is one of our greatest men in Government today.”

Others around town may be more brilliant, eloquent or forceful than Califano, but he is on the verge of becoming the most capable. True, the time is right for him and those very human problems in which he deals. But it is also true that he is something special. He cares. “I want to show people that these social programs can be run right, that they can help those who need help,” he says.”I want to show people that you can manage this place.”

He has extraordinary energy. He is up at 6:30 a.m., at his desk at 7:15. He meets and confers and testifies until 9 p.m., running in a spare secretary to keep the paper flowing. He jogs on the Mall to keep the blood going. He breakfasts three times a week with Congressmen, goes eyeball to eyeball with every committee member who is important. His good humor and tolerance are legendary.

He has no formula for being a Cabinet officer, he says. But he has a rule that many predecessors did not have. “You have to decide,” he says. “Then do it. Don’t let problems fester.” For more than a decade the people at HEW hid in their bureaucratic maze, pushed problems aside, anything to avoid a clamoring public.

Califano wants to stay ahead, to find out what shatters families, why so many kids don’t learn, why it costs so much to run his department.

When anger rises at his ideas, his persistence, his showmanship, Califano pauses for a while behind his big desk and watches and listens. Often the phone rings, as it did after Califano’s statement that people who continued to smoke were “committing slow-motion suicide,” and Jimmy Carter says, “Don’t worry. What you did was right.” Recharged, Joe moves on, determined to make American life a little better than it was.