• U.S.

Donald Regan: Chief Operating Officer

7 minute read
George J. Church

Vice President George Bush did not get to pay a post-operative call on Ronald Reagan until last Wednesday, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane not until Thursday. But Chief of Staff Donald Regan shuttled between his White House office and the Bethesda bedside all week, constituting, with Nancy Reagan, the President’s principal contact with the outside world and becoming, for all intents and purposes, the chief operating officer of the U.S.

It was Regan who decided, only hours after the surgery, that the President should resume immediately the constitutional powers and duties he had briefly transferred to Bush (“Uh-oh, the Russians have fired a missile,” quipped Reagan, noting the chief of staff’s somber expression). It was Regan, in consultation with the First Lady, who determined who should be permitted to see the President and when. It was Regan, too, who pronounced on policy questions that could not be postponed.

The chief of staff ran several decisions past Reagan, who agreed, for example, to reject the latest offer by House Democrats on the budget. But Regan determined on his own the White House response to a Federal Reserve Board move that allowed a faster-than-planned expansion of the nation’s money supply: tacit approval, signaled by making no comment at all. Said Republican Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, assessing Regan’s performance: “He is the acting President. He will be the Sherman Adams of this Administration.”

It was not the first time Regan had been likened to Adams, who ran Dwight Eisenhower’s White House staff with such authority that he was often dubbed the Assistant President. Though he came to the White House only in early February, after four years as Treasury Secretary, Regan has built a hierarchical organization that Adams might well admire. McFarlane retains independent access to the President on foreign policy problems, or did before Reagan’s surgery. But otherwise, says one veteran of Reagan’s first term White House staff, “Don has asserted himself so that nobody is able to lift a finger without his blessing.”

Regan’s power has its price, however. Observes one Republican Congressman: “If you are the undisputed boss, you also have the undisputed responsibility when things go wrong.” And Regan is indeed being blamed for everything from excessive hyperbole in the President’s pre-surgery speeches to a breakdown in the Administration’s relations with Congress.

The criticisms have their contradictory side: on Capitol Hill, Republicans as well as Democrats denounce Regan for steering the President into an overly combative approach, but the Republicans in almost the same breath go on to accuse him of engineering a ruinous attempt at compromise on the budget. Asked his opinion of Regan, one Republican Senator rolls his eyes and mutters, “Disaster. We go down the tubes if he takes over.” Republican Senator Robert Dole carefully chose his words last week on ABC’s Good Morning America when asked about the job of getting a budget compromise. “We know we can’t do it without Ronald Reagan,” the Majority Leader said. “We could probably do it without Don Regan.”

Being a lightning rod is a new experience for Regan, who remained relatively free from criticism both at Treasury and at the giant investment firm of Merrill Lynch & Co., which he ran before going to Washington. He clearly does not enjoy the experience. He replies to criticism of his supposedly confrontational approach by hinting that he is more devoted to the President’s philosophy and program than his first-term predecessor, James Baker. “Remember, a lot of this is Regan letting Reagan take the lead,” the chief of staff told TIME last week. “There may have been times in the past when others have tried to get the President to compromise. But the question is, in a second term, what does the President have to do? At this point we are holding firm, trying to accomplish for Reagan what Reagan wants.”

Despite the knocks, the combative ex-Marine has kept his composure. There is still a look of imminent irreverence in Regan’s eye, and a tough yet mischievous smile seems never far from his lips. “I haven’t lost my sense of humor, and I hope not my balance,” he said last week. “I don’t have an ego problem any more today than I had six months ago.” He pauses for a moment, smiles, and adds, “At least I haven’t detected it.”

Regan has indeed kept his wit. After a newspaper story last week reported “tension” between him and Bush, Regan remarked to the Vice President, “You and I have to cut out this feuding.” Bush asked what it was they were feuding about. “I’m not sure over what, but it’s in the paper,” said Regan. Later, visiting Reagan in his hospital bed, Regan told him, “Mr. President, you’ve got to tell George to stop picking on me,” before showing Reagan the story and assuring him that there was nothing to it. Regan’s joshing approach defused in advance any suspicion that the account might have aroused.

Regan’s organization of the staff has some advantages over the “troika” arrangement that prevailed during most of Reagan’s first term. During those years authority was shared by Baker, who has taken Regan’s old job at Treasury; Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, now Attorney General; and Michael Deaver, who now heads his own public relations firm. Decision making is faster under Regan, and backstairs White House quarrels have generally stopped.

Regan’s staff, a mixture of onetime Treasury aides, first-term holdovers and recalled Reaganauts, has acted effectively in crises. It is credited with preventing much long-term damage from the President’s visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg, once the decision to go had been made, and managing the White House response to the Beirut hostage taking adroitly. Indeed, some of the Capitol Hill criticism of Regan seems to reflect primarily congressional nostalgia for Baker’s assiduous wooing of legislators, which Regan has neither the temperament nor the inclination to duplicate.

But some of the criticisms are entirely valid. Reagan’s highly conservative speechwriters, led by Patrick Buchanan, have been indulging the President’s penchant for oratorical excess to a damaging extent. Before her husband’s surgery, Nancy Reagan complained about the speechwriting operation during a private talk with Donald Regan, who conceded that tighter editing was required. Who will do it is the question. Regan has no time and little sensitivity to seek out nuances. There is no other senior aide with both the authority and the keen judgment to wield a blue pencil as effectively as Richard Darman, now Deputy Treasury Secretary, did during the first term.

The most telling criticism of Regan is that he runs a day-to-day operation in which no one does any long-range planning. David Stockman has been heard to grumble privately that the White House staff no longer seems to have any legislative strategy for more than about three weeks ahead. More generally, one long time Reagan aide asserts, “In the first term, if there was a need, say, for a sophisticated three-month plan for how to use the President’s time to achieve some particular goals, Mike Deaver would take four or five people and go at it half the day. That just doesn’t happen now.”

The tendency toward day-to-day management will inevitably be magnified while Reagan recuperates from his surgery. Even after the President is fully recovered, some Administration well-wishers fear Donald Regan’s pyramid staff system will work against any long-range approach. Says one White House official: “Coping with day-to-day matters, or even with emergencies, when there is just one strong leader at the top is easier than getting a group together that can figure out where to be in four or five months.”

“There is a distinction on Capitol Hill between Regan’s grasp for power and his ability to use it wisely,” summarizes a Republican strategist. Not just on Capitol Hill, either. No one in Washington doubts Regan’s power, but there is a nagging sense that he may lack the collegial temperament to use it as judiciously and effectively as is necessary in such a political town. –By George J. Church. Reported by Sam Allis and Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

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