Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

  The sharpest public blow to Meese came in January 1982, when Dick Allen was replaced as national security adviser by William Clark, a tall, low-key, soft-spoken, boyish-looking Reagan crony for fifteen years. Clark, who had been on the California Supreme Court, was given to riding horses, ranching, and wearing western boots with his gray flannel suits. His only experience in foreign affairs was one year at the State Department as Haig’s deputy. Yet Clark, who had preceded Meese in California as Governor Reagan’s chief of staff, would report only to the president. (Allen had reported to Meese.) When Clark took the national security portfolio, he took half of Meese’s empire out from under him. The troika became a foursome. The whole power situation became less stable. For actually, the cooperation among Meese, Baker and Deaver had been unusual in the first year. Baker’s rise had come during a time of relative harmony. By early 1982, Meese was feeling bruised, one friend said, and deeper rifts lay ahead for the Reagan household. But the president seemed unknowing, and unprepared, when they struck.

  The Staff Coup That Failed

  The sixth key to White House power, and probably the most important axiom for power anywhere in the American system, is to tame your personal hunger for power. The inebriating atmosphere of the White House feeds that malady even among the wisest of power players, such as Jim Baker. Political overreaching is always damaging. Unbridled ambition set up Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon as targets for the press and other politicians; it led to Alexander Haig’s downfall and contributed to the ouster of Donald Regan, as Reagan’s second term chief of staff.

  Steve Bell, a battle-scarred former congressional aide, is fond of warning politicians not to be too clever in hatching plots or laying traps for adversaries. “When you dig a grave for your enemy,” says Bell, “dig two—one for yourself.” It was a warning that Baker and Deaver should have heeded before their White House plot to expand their power.

  Deaver, who had worked for Clark in Sacramento and teamed with him to smooth out problems with Haig, had looked to Clark as a potential ally as national security adviser. But Deaver misjudged Clark, who had a long personal relationship with Reagan and now commanded an independent apparatus and a direct channel to the president. Moreover, Clark felt that Baker, Deaver, and Stuart Spencer, Reagan’s favorite campaign adviser, wanted to use him to ease Meese out as cabinet coordinator; he claimed they had sounded him out on taking over Meese’s White House office as a first step. Clark threatened to go to the president to block them, for Clark had ties to Meese, both as a fellow California Reaganite and as a kindred conservative. Meese was a hard-liner on social and law-and-order issues, as Clark was on foreign policy.

  Thus, Clark’s arrival in the White House sharpened the internal power rift. Over time, Clark’s secretive, independent power plays produced frequent and bitter clashes, between Clark and the Baker-Deaver axis.54 Deaver was stunned to learn that Clark had given President Reagan a plan in early 1983 for reorganizing the White House staff, eliminating Baker’s job as chief of staff, naming Meese the administration’s spokesman, and making the foursome all coequals. When Reagan showed Clark’s plan to Deaver during a flight on Air Force One, with Clark sitting nearby, Deaver objected strenuously. “It won’t work,” Deaver told the president. “If you do this, I’ll have to leave.” After that, Deaver and Clark were no longer on speaking terms.

  Clark angered Deaver and Baker—and exasperated secretaries of State Alexander Haig and George Shultz—by keeping them in the dark on foreign-policy moves. He would work directly with the president on ideas such as launching a bid to meet Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in mid-1982, or drafting an explosive executive order in October 1983, requiring top officials to undergo polygraphs to fight news leaks. Clark even toyed with opening a diplomatic back channel to Moscow through Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, without telling Shultz.

  The climax came in October 1983, when Interior Secretary James Watt resigned. Clark, who told friends he was sick of the bitter White House infighting and exhausted from the strain of a job for which he had little preparation, privately proposed to Reagan that he move to Interior, a job that appealed to Clark’s western-rancher soul. Baker and Deaver, with support from Mrs. Reagan, also urged Reagan to move Clark to Interior, though they persuaded the president to delay for five days. They had faulted Clark to Reagan for bureaucratic end runs and for hard-line handling of Congress and had argued that he was substantively “over his head” on arms control. I was told that Secretary Shultz had also complained to Reagan that Clark’s office was a bottleneck, slowing State Department papers for the president. But Shultz, like most of political Washington, was taken by surprise when late on Thursday afternoon, October 13, Reagan named Clark to be secretary of Interior.

  It was a moment that Baker and Deaver had been awaiting; for they prepared the next step—Clark’s replacement. They had proposed to Reagan that he install Baker as national security adviser and make Deaver White House chief of staff. These shifts would fulfill both their ambitions. Baker had long wanted a top foreign-policy post, secretary of State or Defense or CIA director—for a new challenge and prestige, said a colleague. For Deaver, this would fulfill a long personal climb to the top, though pro-Meese officials contended that Baker actually planned to run the whole White House apparatus.

  Two Reagan intimates told me that Nancy Reagan had urged the president to adopt the Baker-Deaver plan. Stuart Spencer also helped sell Reagan. Other White House officials said that Vice President Bush had endorsed the plan and possibly Secretary Shultz, too. Darman, who was to be Baker’s deputy national security adviser, drafted a press release for the president personally to announce these important shifts on Friday. White House reporters were alerted to wait for an important four P.M. announcement. But the announcement never came.

  Reagan first had to attend a one-hour National Security Planning Group meeting with Clark, Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, Meese, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, chief U.S. delegate to the United Nations. Ordinarily, Baker would have attended and Deaver could have, too. Instead, they decided to wait in Baker’s office, in what other officials later called a classic blunder: surrendering close control over the president. But Baker stayed away deliberately, to avoid putting the president in too obvious a squeeze. Deaver felt that by arming Reagan with the press announcement, they had presented their rivals with a fait accompli. It was a factional coup, the pragmatic faction of Baker, Deaver, and Shultz besting the more hard-line faction of Clark, Weinberger, Casey, Meese, and Kirkpatrick.

  According to the Clark faction’s account, Reagan did not actually carry the press release with him. But walking down the hall to the national security meeting, Reagan pulled Clark aside and said, “I’ve got your successor already chosen.”

  “Who is it?” Clark asked.

  “Jim Baker,” Reagan replied, “and Mike will be chief of staff.”

  Clark was stunned. Later he told others that he thought the president was joking, but looking at his face, Clark could see the president was serious. The prospect horrified Clark.

  “Have you talked to George Shultz or Cap Weinberger or Bill Casey about this?” he asked.

  “No, and I’m not planning to,” Reagan said. “I already have an announcement prepared.”

  They went into the meeting, Clark fearful that Reagan would announce his decision; but Reagan did nothing. Clark passed notes to Meese, Weinberger, and Casey about the president’s intentions. After the session, Clark persuaded Reagan to come down to Clark’s office in the White House basement. Weinberger, Casey, and Meese came along.

  All four men strenuously argued against both Baker and Deaver. They contended that Deaver was not up to the job of chief of staff, not competent to handle the range of substantive issues. For Meese and Clark, for whom Deaver had served almost as a flunky in Reagan’s California days, such elevation of Deaver was unthinkable. Weinberger and Casey were particularly outspoken against Baker. They argued that his appointment as national security adviser would sha
ke the confidence of the international security community and would be viewed as a sign of weakness toward the Soviets, since Baker was known as a moderate. All four worked on Reagan, arguing that Baker be sent anywhere but to the NSC job.

  “He can have my job even though I know he’s the biggest leaker in town,” Casey told Reagan. “He can’t go to NSC!”

  Clark had a different idea. With a chance to get Baker out of the White House, he was ready to reverse his own plans. He told the president: “Perhaps you should consider sending Jim to Interior, and I’ll remain where I am.”

  The president replied quickly—to everyone’s surprise—that Baker could not become secretary of Interior because of his ownership interests in oil and gas in Texas. He would be disqualified because of conflict of interest, unless he would be willing to dispossess himself.

  For half an hour, the harangue went on. When Reagan did not make the press announcement or return to the Oval Office, Deaver called Clark’s secretary, Jackie Hill, demanding, “Where is the president? Where is the president?”

  Reagan felt opposing pulls within his official family. “He was torn inside in a hundred directions,” said one Reagan intimate who was not directly involved. “He was being torn on both sides by old friends.”

  Finally, Reagan agreed to back off the appointments. He returned to the Oval Office to inform first Deaver and then Baker.

  “I’ve had a lot of opposition to this from some of the boys,” the president told them. “I want to think about it over the weekend.”

  By more than one account, Deaver was so deeply hurt personally that he yelled at Reagan. “You don’t have enough confidence in me to make me chief of staff!” he shouted.

  More calmly, Baker suggested dropping the whole scheme. “If it presents a problem for you, Mr. President, that’s not what I want,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is put you in a difficult position. Forget it.”

  “No, Jim, I’m not going to forget it,” Reagan said. “I’m going to think about it over the weekend.”

  But when he came back on Monday, Reagan told them he was shelving the plan. Another battle immediately ensued over whether he should pick Kirkpatrick for the NSC job, as the Clark-Weinberger faction wanted, or pick Clark’s more moderate deputy, Robert C. McFarlane, whom Baker, Deaver, and Shultz favored. Having disappointed Baker and Deaver on their own plans, the president took their advice on McFarlane.

  But the tensions inside the White House remained for the rest of Reagan’s first term. Throughout 1984 the White House was full of talk of an imminent shake-up, but Reagan did nothing to resolve the power conflicts. The entire episode left deep scars and ultimately contributed to the departure of Clark and Deaver from the administration and to the decisions of Meese and Baker to leave the White House at the start of Reagan’s second term.

  Back to the Republican Model

  What is interesting about Reagan is that the competitive staff structure of his first term fits more with the pattern of Democratic presidents than the standard Republican model. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford liked to operate with a single strong chief of staff and a clear White House hierarchy. Historically, Eisenhower’s Sherman Adams and Nixon’s John Haldeman stand out as two of the strongest staff chiefs in modern presidential history. By contrast, Democratic presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy preferred a more freewheeling inner circle. They operated without a chief of staff, using several high-powered White House aides as spokes of a wheel with themselves at the hub. Lyndon Johnson, too, liked to play off his top aides against each other. Jimmy Carter’s White House had a loose structure, leaving the lines of power unclear.

  But as Reagan’s second term began, he reverted to the Republican model—by accident. For in all this White House maneuvering, the president was strangely passive for a man with a reputation as a strong leader. It is a mark of his difficulty in dealing with personal matters that he was not the one to put his house in order. Ultimately, the independent urges of Reagan’s subordinates solved the problem of staff rivalry: They left the White House. Jim Baker arranged a job swap with Don Regan (at Regan’s initiative), with Baker becoming Treasury secretary and Regan becoming chief of staff. Deaver sold the idea to Reagan. It was a strange decision for a president who had understood in 1980 that he needed a chief of staff, such as Baker, with good political instincts and political antenna. Don Regan had none of these vital staff attributes, and both he and the president paid a heavy price. Throughout Donald Regan’s two-year tenure, Reagan seemed constantly saddled with troubles, from the furor over his visit to the German cemetery in Bitburg in early 1985 to the crippling Iran-contra scandal in late 1986.

  Inside the White House, Regan succeeded where Baker had not: in centralizing command and concentrating the troika’s dividend powers in his own hands. As a scrappy, self-made Irishman, a poor boy from Boston who won a scholarship to Harvard and made it to the top as a millionaire chairman of Merrill Lynch, Regan ran the White House with the bullish, take-charge style he learned on Wall Street. Regan operated more like a corporate CEO or a Marine officer (he had been both) than a politician accustomed to the ways of sharing power. He personally held all the key levers in the White House power structure. His hand-picked aides controlled the president’s paper flow and schedule but were so meek and dutiful that they were quickly nicknamed the “mice.”

  Given a free rein in the president’s political household, Regan tolerated no competing power centers inside the White House. In 1985, Edward Rollins, the blunt-spoken political director who had managed Reagan’s reelection campaign, clashed with Regan a few times and then resigned in frustration. Periodically, Pat Buchanan, the conservative columnist tapped as communications director, pushed for a confrontational strategy with Congress and the press. Under Buchanan, the strongly ideological speechwriting staff of Bentley Elliot, Peggy Noonan, and Tony Dolan produced sharper, more passionate Reaganite speeches than Regan wanted; Regan had his loyal lieutenants tone down the speeches. Eventually, Regan fired Ben Elliott, the chief speechwriter, and Buchanan went back to the freer life of the columnist. Gradually, the White House apparatus came to reflect more loyalty to Regan than to the president.

  Robert McFarlane, the national security adviser, had the only internal channel direct to the president, and Regan moved to control it. Early on, the two men crossed swords when McFarlane awakened the president—without first informing Regan—on March 24, 1985 to advise him that an American major had been shot dead by a Soviet guard in East Germany. Regan, caught unawares during a morning staff session with the president, immediately called McFarlane on the carpet. People in nearby offices could hear Regan bellowing. He was in a shouting rage, and McFarlane, a fellow Marine, gradually responded in cold, rising anger.55

  “I’m in charge and running this place, and I need to be kept informed,” Regan blustered.

  “You’re right, you should have been informed,” McFarlane conceded. “But I’m not going to stand here and put up with abuse of this kind.”

  “Well, I’ll run the place the way I want, and you’ll goddamn do it the way I say to do it,” Regan shouted.

  “No, I won’t,” McFarlane shot back.

  McFarlane headed for the door, telling Regan that he was packing up for good. Within minutes Regan telephoned to apologize for losing his temper and to say he hoped McFarlane was not serious about leaving. A walkout by McFarlane would look bad so early in Regan’s tenure. Their relations were strained, simmering until McFarlane resigned in December. Regan handpicked Rear Admiral John Poindexter as McFarlane’s successor, but Poindexter was more secretive than McFarlane. Moreover, Regan knew little about foreign policy and left the substance to Poindexter, and Regan lacked the political horse sense to give the president independent judgment on the political risks in his foreign ventures.

  Nonetheless, in domestic policy, Donald Regan enjoyed “the most extreme delegation [of presidential] authority to one person” in the White House staff, since Sherman
Adams after President Eisenhower’s heart attack in 1955, according to presidential scholar Richard Neustadt of Harvard University.56 It was an unfortunate, almost prophetic comparison, because Adams was forced from office by scandal, lacking defenders other than his president; Regan, too, was forced out in early 1987.

  Actually, Regan’s power was not as a great as it appeared. He had supremacy inside the White House but not a monopoly. The cabinet had more powerful figures than in the first term, evidence that power is often more in the person than in the job. With their ties to Reagan, Baker at Treasury and Meese as Attorney General were more powerful than their predecessors. With foreign policy more important in the second term, Shultz, Weinberger, McFarlane, Poindexter, and Casey had significant influence. And the NSC staff ran the funding and gunrunning to the Nicaraguan contras and the arms deals with Iran. The lesson was that even with control of the White House apparatus, the chief of staff could handle only so much.

  Donald Regan tried to run a tidy ship. But alas, tidiness has never been a ringing virtue of American politics. What got lost in the corporate command were the political networking, the accessibility to outsiders, and the canny calculation of political gains and costs that had made Jim Baker so valuable to Reagan. The best staff people in Congress or the White House must protect their leaders by anticipating problems and sensing pitfalls, but Regan was full of political blindspots. He did not properly forsee the blow-up over the Bitburg visit, sanctions against South Africa, or the Iranian operation. He angered congressional Republicans by zigzags on the budget. For all of his talk about a millionaire’s independence, he became known as a “yes man” to Reagan.