Cabinet Appointments: Kennedy and Johnson

Abstract

Between the November election and 20 January, the incoming president must decide on whom he will appoint to head the executive departments of the federal government. A re-elected president will, during the same period, give consideration to how much he wants to change the personnel of his cabinet as he moves into his second term. Of the seven presidents being considered, five came first to the White House as a consequence of winning the November election — Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush — and of those, Nixon and Reagan were re-elected to a second term. Johnson and Ford both came to the White House to complete the term of the president whom they had up to that point served as vice-president. Therefore Johnson and Ford were, as will be seen, in a quite different position regarding the appointment of cabinet officers from the other five. Initially, their prime aim was to keep intact the cabinet of their predecessor, but they both later made changes once stability and continuity had been restored following the traumatic events that caused their respective accessions to the presidency. Johnson had less than a year to serve before the next presidential election, in which he was to be elected to a full term of his own. He preferred to leave cabinet changes until after November 1964. Ford, on the other hand, took over with well over two years still to go before the next presidential election, which he was to fight but lose. Regarding his cabinet personnel, Ford’s strategy was somewhat different. Although, like Johnson, his initial aim was to keep his predecessor’s cabinet intact, he changed it extensively before the 1976 election. It is also worth remembering that Johnson replaced the popular Kennedy while Ford replaced a disgraced Nixon.