Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  Dick Darman, a member of Reagan’s first-term inner circle, compared the president to a frisky colt. “The horse will kick, but he also wants somebody reining him in,” Darman observed. “He knows his own tendencies, and he is in fact a more complicated person than people give him credit for. He still likes to be the boy, the adolescent, the rebel, the guy pressing the outer limits. But he also likes to get things done and recognizes the need to move in the main stream” even when that means having a pragmatic staff to check his ideological impulses.40

  Periodically, however, Reagan would kick over the traces just to show that he was in charge. Michael Deaver, a constant companion during Reagan’s two successful election campaigns and his first term, recalled an incident during the 1980 campaign when Reagan was being hammered by the press for rhetorical gaffes and inaccurate statements. Deaver pulled Reagan aside. “You’ve got to stay away from the press,” he advised Reagan. “All they’re going to do is jump on you for the stupid things you said yesterday or what they think are the stupid things you said yesterday.” Reagan said nothing. But as they were walking back to his motorcade, Reagan suddenly jumped up on the running board of his car and for ten minutes answered questions from reporters. Then he got into his car.

  Deaver piled in after Reagan and demanded rather hotly: “What was that all about? I thought we just discussed that and decided you were going to stay away from the press.”

  In a rare burst of temper, Reagan shot back: “If you’re so damned smart, why aren’t you the one running for president?”

  Half an hour later back at their hotel, Reagan, who has trouble dealing with close personal emotions, tried to make amends by wordlessly offering Deaver a gold pen set someone had given him.41

  Staff Rolling the Cabinet

  What is astonishing is that people with long experience in the Washington power game somehow forget that the president’s staff generally can overpower cabinet members, regardless of protocol or formal rank. There are exceptions, especially when a powerful staff aide moves into a cabinet post, thereby combining rank with close presidential ties: both Baker and Meese did this during Reagan’s second term, and Caspar Weinberger did it throughout the Reagan presidency. But generally, confusion arises because cabinet members are given public prominence, treated as symbols of the president’s delegated authority. They must go through the process of Senate confirmation, whereas White House staff aides do not (perhaps they should). Cabinet members are the public spokesmen for policies, even when the main outlines were formulated largely in the White House. Cabinet rank connotes prestige and influence—and occasionally the power to match.42 But the smartest Cabinet officers know that they cross the White House staff at their peril. For when it comes to infighting, the inner circle has clear advantage over the outer circle.

  Nothing more graphically illustrates the relative power of cabinet and staff than who “rolls” whom. To roll someone is Washington tough talk for overturning them, toppling them, bringing them down, as a wrestler or a street mugger might.

  When Jimmy Carter’s presidency was going through a siege of instability in late 1979, Carter took the advice of his chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, and other personal advisers including his pollster, Pat Caddell, and fired four cabinet secretaries: Michael Blumenthal at Treasury, Joseph Califano at Health, Education and Welfare, James Schlesinger at Energy, and Brock Adams at Transportation. It was an open secret that White House staff aides wanted to settle scores with all four, especially Califano and Blumenthal, who had crossed swords with them.

  Personally, Ronald Reagan was exceedingly reluctant to fire a cabinet officer, and yet his staff prompted him to ease out a string of cabinet members or near-cabinet-level officers: James Watt, Anne Burford, Margaret Heckler, John Block, Raymond Donovan, Alexander Haig—usually to rid his presidency of political boils, but not always. In Reagan’s second term, for example, there was no evidence that the president was personally dissatisfied with Margaret Heckler as secretary of Health and Human Services. Her undoing is a case study in the political power of the White House staff. Chief of Staff Donald Regan set out to fire her, and he succeeded because he had the power to move the president and to have his staff aides undercut her with derogatory leaks.

  Since Heckler was not a first-rank cabinet secretary and not a hard-line Reaganite, I suppose it can be argued that her ouster does not prove the preeminence of the White House staff. But that disclaimer cannot be used with former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, whose crisp military bearing, toughness toward Moscow, and experience as the four-star American NATO commander and deputy to Henry Kissinger deeply impressed Reagan. If there was anyone who should have understood the power of the White House palace guard, it was Haig. He had not only worked for Kissinger in the White House, but had been chief of staff when the Nixon presidency was crumbling. From experience, he knew how those at the center could hold those in the wings at bay. He understood that the machinery of policy-making gave important leverage, and he got himself in trouble on day one of the Reagan presidency by reaching too brashly to master that machinery.

  Haig had reason to assume that Reagan wanted him to be the “vicar” of foreign policy. Because of constant feuds in the Carter administration between Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Reaganites decided to downgrade the NSC position. Reagan had promised Haig there would be no repeat of the Carter problems. On foreign policy, he had said, “I’ll look to you, Al,” and Haig had read that as his mandate.43 Beyond that, Haig—though not a first-rank geopolitical strategist—regarded himself as a worldly veteran, a sophisticate among neophytes. He had respect for Reagan’s political instincts but felt the president needed tutoring on foreign policy. “The President is the ultimate university,” he wrote in his memoir Caveat. But his lecturing the president and his aides on global diplomacy grated on the White House staff.

  What set off alarm bells was Haig’s attempted “power grab” on Inauguration Day 1981. While the president and his closest subordinates were still in the formal inaugural attire, Haig handed Meese—then the dominant White House aide—a twenty-page memorandum setting out Haig’s charter for the State Department to dominate foreign policy-making. State was to chair the old interdepartmental groups (IGs) that develop foreign policy, with Haig at the apex and other agencies in subordinate positions. Haig had learned from Kissinger that “he who controls the key IGs, controls the flow of options to the President and, therefore, to a degree, controls policy.”44

  Moreover, Haig wanted to move control of crisis management—the handling of foreign emergencies—from the National Security Council staff to the State Department. To embody his mandate, Haig wanted Reagan’s quick signature on his draft of National Security Decision Directive Number 1—NSDD-1.

  One White House official protested to me that Haig was in such a hurry, “he didn’t even give the president a chance to change his clothes.” But the White House staff blocked him.

  Both sides immediately sensed what Haig called a “struggle for primacy.” Much later, Haig told me that he believed that Baker, Deaver, and perhaps Meese “had designs from day one on establishing White House staff supremacy over the cabinet.” And the senior White House staff were stunned by Haig’s boldness. “Have you ever seen such a power play?” Baker said incredulously to the others. “Haig wants everything beyond the water’s edge.”

  In some alarm, another top aide told me, “Haig thinks he’s president.” Recalling Haig’s brief presidential candidacy in 1980 and sensing Haig’s long-term ambitions for the White House, the Reagan inner circle decided to check him at once. Baker advised Meese that no secretary of State had ever had as broad a mandate as Haig sought. Although Haig had worked out his memo with Richard Allen, the national security adviser, Meese told him it would have to be reviewed by other cabinet officers. Weeks passed. The proposal was watered down and not signed by Reagan for more than a year. An interim decision gave Haig some of what he wa
nted but also awarded Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and CIA Director William Casey interagency groups to chair.

  The fuse of confrontation between Haig and Reagan’s staff was lit when Meese and Baker persuaded Reagan to turn over crisis management to Vice President Bush—the only other senior official with extensive foreign policy experience. It had been Meese’s idea, so as not to offend Haig by leaving crisis management with Richard Allen. But Haig hit the ceiling. When word of this plan broke in the morning press, Haig openly challenged the White House by declaring his dissatisfaction at a congressional hearing. The troika, meeting with the president, were infuriated at Haig for having “gone public.” Meese pushed his own plan. Baker, alarmed by exposure of an open rift, urged Reagan: “Before this thing goes further, it’s got to be nipped in the bud.” Reagan, heeding their advice, called to tell Haig he was naming Bush. That night, March 24, 1981, barely two months into the term, Haig was at the brink of resigning. But he was dissuaded by Reagan’s old friend, William Clark, then Haig’s deputy.45

  Barely a week later, Haig stirred another controversy after the assassination attempt against President Reagan. With Vice President Bush flying back to Washington from Texas, Haig rushed to the White House Press Room, where he went on live television and tried to reassure the nation by asserting that “as of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president.” Haig’s intention was to calm the public. But he misquoted the Constitution on his place in the political line of succession, and his tense, quavery delivery caused more criticism. This time, Baker and Meese came to his political rescue: They went on television and praised Haig, in a show of unity during the administration’s hour of trial.

  Haig remained in the Reagan cabinet for another fifteen months, contributing to foreign policy decisions, but also to acrimony and tension between cabinet and the White House. With some justice, Haig felt that Weinberger repeatedly poached on his diplomatic turf. He subsequently complained that Clark, who became national security adviser in early 1982, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, chief delegate to the United Nations, had outflanked his efforts to mediate the Falklands Islands War by making their own contacts with Argentina. Accompanying Reagan to Europe in mid-1982, Haig accused the White House staff of denying him proper protocol; he feuded repeatedly with Clark over what instructions to send to Kirkpatrick and how Washington should deal with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He later accused Clark of picking a day when Haig was out of town to schedule a National Security Council meeting on sanctions against a Soviet natural gas pipeline in Europe. The pot boiled over. Clark could have saved Haig then, as he had before, but he privately remarked that he had “begun to wonder about the man’s mental balance.” And he joined the White House troika in advising President Reagan to replace Haig with the steadier, more solid George Shultz.

  Haig’s own account, in Caveat, makes the White House staff the villains of his downfall, and admits his surprising naïveté at how he was constantly damaged by press leaks. Underlining the most rudimentary element of White House staff power, Haig complained to me that the inner circle denied him sufficient access to the president, which had “mortally handicapped” him in advising Reagan. “During the transition from the election to the inauguration, I saw the president alone once!” he protested. “That’s all. That began to worry me very, very much, early on.”46 It never got better he said; it was hard for him even to reach the president by telephone. But it was the campaign of press leaks, turned on when the White House staff was irked with him, that provoked Haig’s greatest resentment.

  “In the Reagan Administration, they [leaks] were not merely a problem, they were a way of life, and in the end I concluded that they were a way of governing,” Haig wrote. “Leaks constituted policy; they were the authentic voice of government. It is not surprising that this should have been so. The President’s closest aides were essentially public relations men. They were consummate professionals—wizards is not too strong a word. In my view they were the most skillful handlers of the press since the New Deal.”47

  Haig speaks with some justice. Richard Allen used to talk to reporters privately about Haig’s “megalomania” and to suggest that Haig’s triple bypass surgery had made his behavior “weird.” Several White House officials spoke to reporters about his “mercurial, pugnacious, power-grabbing behavior” in ways bound to undercut him in print or on television. Haig’s protests—that the White House was waging a “guerrilla campaign” against him—did no good with Reagan. For that made Haig seem more the odd man out, the truculent complainer who could not be a team player, and team play was valued by Reagan above all else. Haig’s tormentors surely knew that by taunting him, by keeping the pot of controversy boiling, they were arranging Haig’s undoing—a classic lesson in the power of the White House staff to roll the most senior member of the cabinet.

  Five Keys to White House Power

  The power struggles within the White House staff are fully as fierce, if not fiercer, than those against cabinet members. In the Reagan years, I think it is revealing that in this power game at the pinnacle, Jim Baker emerged as the master of the first-term troika. Baker’s success provides insight both into how the inside game of staff power is played and into how government can be made to operate effectively. It offers lessons for those who sit in these same chairs in the years to come.

  The chief of staff’s post is arguably the most testing job in any administration—next to the president’s. Cabinet secretaries have specific responsibilities, a fixed agenda, particular constituencies, certain committees in Congress to work with. The agenda of the chief of staff, like the president’s stretches from wall to wall. He must deal with every faction, consider every major issue, and most important scan the horizon for trouble and protect the president, opposing other top officials in the president’s interest, and yet not alienate them, shut them off, or intimidate them so that their views are not heard by the president.

  “You have to be smart but you mustn’t be intellectual because most areas where you make decisions have to be politically possible, not intellectually perfect,” commented Michael Blumenthal, Carter’s treasury secretary and a White House appointee in the Kennedy-Johnson years. “You must have enormous energy, work very hard, and jump around between twenty topics a day. You must be a very good pleader in small meetings—you’re always in meetings with two to ten other people, all of whom are strong-willed and persuasive. You must know when to speak and when to shut up. You must have a sense of power and a sense of deviousness, a gut feel for when there is an opening and where do I get things done. You must be able to judge the personality of the President and to figure out what appeals to him. You have to have good political judgment and a strong sense of priority. You have to be very hard. There has to be a steely quality. You have to know how to use your elbows and be prepared to do the dirty work.”48

  Baker’s success is a textbook case: He had many of those qualities and a commitment to making government work. Understanding how Baker came out on top is important because so many natural advantages lay with Meese: He was a Californian, a longtime Reagan lieutenant, a man of proven loyalty, with a network of Reaganite allies and a sure grasp of Reagan’s political views. Meese was bright, hard-working, dedicated. He had joined Governor Reagan’s staff in 1967 as legal affairs adviser, and then for six years had served as the governor’s chief of staff. In Sacramento, he had been Reagan’s right arm in helping keep order on the University of California campuses and Reagan’s chief negotiator with the state Assembly in working out a welfare plan. Moreover, Meese and Reagan were kindred ideological spirits; he knew Reagan’s themes so well that he could finish the new president’s sentences without fear of misstatement. Though Meese was in his late forties and Reagan in his early seventies, they were temperamentally similar. “Each was an amiable loner, compulsively spreading good cheer, friendly to all but friend to very, very few,” Laurence Barrett of Time magazine shrewdly observed.49

&n
bsp; As the Reagan crowd took over Washington, Meese was Mr. Everything: campaign chief of staff, director of the transition, architect of the new cabinet-council system, administration spokesman, and interpreter of Reagan to the new cabinet and the Washington political community. Those with California experience, like Lou Cannon of The Washington Post, who had covered Reagan in Sacramento, identified Meese as the man to watch. Meese was the authoritative voice. In the early cabinet meetings, it was Meese who synthesized the arguments, prodded the discussion, or shelved matters for another day. Others in the Reagan entourage privately called him “deputy president” or “the prime minister.”

  Had Meese been shrewd in the ways of Washington, he would have sensed those titles were setting him up for a fall. But he did not. He let his aides play up his role and power. One of them advised me that “the way Reagan operates, you’ve got a lot of running room for Ed.” Meese, with his good-natured, breathy chortle and his conservative Adam Smith ties, insisted he was not making policy, only implementing Reagan’s desires. “I’m not an assistant president like Sherman Adams,” he assured me. “It’s that I know Ronald Reagan and where he wants to go.”50

  Jim Baker, on the other hand, was an interloper. Not only was he an Ivy League Texan (educated at Princeton and the Hill School), but he had been the nemesis of the Reaganites in 1976, when he managed President Ford’s campaign for reelection and blunted the Reagan rebellion. Again in 1980, Baker had fought against Reagan’s cause as the mastermind of George Bush’s campaign. Baker was regarded with suspicion by movement conservatives who knew he did not share their ideological agenda. Baker, scion of a patrician Houston family, was a pragmatic millionaire Republican in the corporate mold. Personally, he was not as hellbent for defense as the Reagan diehards, for he was no cold warrior. And he had no urge to carry the New Right banner on abortion, busing, or school prayer. Worse, he had close personal links to a sitting vice president, a figure of mistrust in the inner circle of any new president, especially if the vice president is a former rival. Baker had been Bush’s manager when Bush blasted Reagan for preaching “voodoo economics.”