For six years he has been the most stalwart member of Congress to believe fervently that Ronald Reagan should be President. In 1976 he ran the Californian’s valiant but losing attempt to win the nomination from Gerald Ford. This year he again chaired Reagan’s presidential campaign committee and again nominated him for President. Now he is getting his reward by being allowed to put into effect a unique plan he has been urging on Reagan for 18 months. Although he holds no formal position of leadership among Republicans, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 58, has suddenly become one of the most powerful men in Washington, with privileges and responsibilities that are without precedent in any relationship between a President and a legislator. He is scheduled to be the connecting link between the White House and the Congress.
“What are we seeking to do is to make Congress as much as possible a full partner with the President,” Laxalt told TIME’S congressional correspondent, Neil MacNeil. Laxalt would be Reagan’s spokesman in Congress, explaining to the leaders of both parties in the House and Senate just what the President’s policy is and driving down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell Reagan about the desires and problems of the legislators who must get the Administration’s new bills passed. Says Laxalt: “He wants me to be his eyes and ears on the Hill.”
Gray-haired and softspoken, Laxalt is a deeply conservative Senator who is respected by his colleagues for arguing his points without abrasiveness. What really impresses Washington—which knows that propinquity is power —is the fact that the Senator plans to have offices and a staff of six in the White House itself or in the nearby Executive Office Building. In a sense, Reagan is trying to bridge the constitutional gulf between the White House and the Congress. Laxalt sees no legal bars to the plan. Some constitutional scholars, however, see problems. Stanford Law School Professor Gerald Gunther says it could be argued that “this novel institutional arrangement is incompatible with the purpose of the constitutional ban against any member of Congress holding an executive office.”
Laxalt is moving swiftly to solve a more immediate problem: how his role would coexist or clash with that of the G.O.P. leadership in Congress. Says Laxalt: “I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want to interfere with the prerogatives of leadership at all. There’s no way I can be the point man on legislation.”
To back up his words, the Senator has already supported the G.O.P.’s current leaders. Worried that the Senate’s ultra-right wing would try to displace him as the majority’s chief, Tennessee’s Howard Baker asked for Laxalt’s support. He got it. Says Laxalt: “Howard’s done a good job. He’s one of the best consensus achievers.” Baker then promptly announced that he had Laxalt’s backing in a successful maneuver to ward off any coup.
Later, Laxalt reported to Reagan what he had done. “He was pleased,” he says. The President-elect then formally gave his blessing to the arrangement that his man on the Hill, acting alone but in full confidence that he knew precisely what his old friend wanted, had quietly worked out behind the scenes.
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