Just when he needs help, they are beginning to depart
Anderson, Rashish, Hormats, Ture, Roberts, Jordan. One after another, Ronald Reagan's economic advisers have been emptying out their desks and leaving. Some have left for personal reasons, and others over substantive disputes. But the overall effect has been to underscore an impression of disarray within the Administration's top economic ranks.
With the economy still slumping and interest rates sky high, holes have begun appearing at the State Department, the Treasury and the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Meanwhile, policy-making has become a desperate waiting game, with virtually all options for actions ruled out by the principles of Reaganomics, leaving the top advisers little choice but to hope that a brisk recovery will somehow occur. Says Jerry Jordan, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, who resigned early this month, citing family reasons: "You have got to remember that the President himself has set economic policy, and he is so incredibly consistent that it really does not matter who the subalterns or lieutenants are."
Jordan's resignation is only the latest in a string of departures that have been going on since early last winter. First to depart was Myer Rashish, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. Long an irritant to right-wing conservatives because of his liberal views on international trade matters, Rashish resigned following a series of personality clashes with Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
Last month Robert Hormats, State's Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, also resigned. First appointed to the staff of Henry Kissinger's National Security Council in 1969, Hormats had served in economic posts during the past four Administrations. Among his other complaints, he objected to Reagan's efforts to block or at least delay the Soviet
Union's planned construction of a natural gas pipeline to Western Europe, and announced his resignation.
Also out the door was Martin Anderson, the President's top policy development adviser. A strong advocate of supply-side economics who helped formulate the policy on which Reagan campaigned for the presidency, Anderson left after being effectively locked out of the inner circle of the White House decision-making process. He is now doing research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
The most controversial resignations have been two top Treasury Department supply-siders, Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Policy, who left in February, and Norman Ture, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Tax and Economic Affairs, who departed in June. Neither has disguised his dismay at the drift in Administration economic policy. Said Ture of the compromise plan to boost taxes $98 billion over the next three years: "The package is damned unfortunate. It is going to be self-defeating." Roberts summed up his gloomy view of Administration policymaking: "There is no policy any more. The policymakers bend whichever way the wind is blowing that day."