"He is the most loyal team member that anybody could want"
It is one of the fascinating paradoxes and ironies of the Reagan Administration. The right-wingers of the Republican Party keep attacking Vice President George Bush, charging that he is a moderate who is working to undermine the Reagan revolution. But Bush's critics have an inflated view of his powers, Bush's own small staff is dispirited, and his influence within the White House is murky at best.
Nonetheless, recent White House departures of longtime conservative Reagan advisers and the far right's growing feeling that the President's foreign policy is not aggressive enough have led the hard core to increase its attacks. "George Bush was the Trojan horse who opened this Administration up to non-Reaganites," charges John Lofton Jr., editor of Conservative Digest. Bush is blamed for bringing in James A. Baker, his former campaign manager, to be Reagan's chief of staff. Baker then supposedly appointed other "Bush-whackers," who have turned the Reagan Administration soft.
White House aides are amused at the proposition that Bush has established his own cells within the Administration. Indeed, Bush was so intent on proving he was a team player that he has tiptoed around the appointments process, to the dismay of his longtime supporters. Although Bush last week clumsily tried to deny that he once called Reaganomics "voodoo economics," the fact that he made the statement in 1980 is viewed by the right as proof that the Vice President is not a true believer. However, the fact that he tried to deny saying it may be even more interesting; it is an indication of the lengths to which Bush will go to show his loyalty to Reagan.
Far from de-Reaganizing the Administration, Bush is having some trouble holding his own operation together. Recently, two key staff members quit because of dissension in the group. Richard Bond was Bush's deputy chief of staff until he took a job as deputy director of the Republican National Committee, a position that will give him direct control over campaign strategy through the 1982 elections. Right-wingers view Bond's move as just the latest and most outrageous indication that Bush is quietly taking over. But Bond was so frustrated as Bush's deputy that he can no longer even be counted as a Bush loyalist. In addition, Robert Thompson, the Vice President's liaison with Congress, is departing this week. Thompson was discouraged by a staff system that he feels undercuts senior advisers and undermines Bush's effectiveness.
At the heart of the Vice President's staff problems is a longtime Bush associate, Jennifer A. Fitzgerald, technically Bush's assistant for scheduling but in reality a dominant figure who has much to say about where Bush goes, what he does and whom he sees. Bond, Thompson and other staff members say Fitzgerald summarily overrules their recommendations about political events Bush should attend and the Governors, Congressmen or even old friends Bush should see.