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On secondary matters the President will sometimes accept the consensus even if it goes against his grain. A prime example is the agenda of social issues—particularly banning abortion and compulsory busing and reinstituting prayer in public schools—that are all-important to his New Right followers. Reagan believes in that agenda too, and stressed it as a candidate. But he accepted the judgment of his legislative staff that pushing hard for such measures would complicate the passage of his economic program, which to Reagan has a higher priority. The most the President would do was to give North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, the paladin of the New Right, a green light to bring up his social measures in the last session of Congress. Without active support from the White House, Helms failed dismally: not a word of the New Right agenda has been written into law.
The price of the stress on consensus, of course, is that by the time an issue reaches Reagan, conflicts have frequently been muffled or at least glossed over, and he does not hear forceful arguments on either side of the case. Most advisers nonetheless learn quickly to adjust to this system, and they are amply rewarded: Reagan hates to discipline anyone, and will rarely criticize aides even for sloppy staff work that gets him into political trouble. When he does reject an adviser's views, he usually tries to let the subordinate down as gently as possible. For example, when Secretary of State George Shultz urged him to attend Leonid Brezhnev's funeral in Moscow and talk to the new Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, Reagan replied, "Gosh, is this the time to reach out on substance when they have their interregnum going on?" Comments Baker: "He makes clear that you don't lose with him just because you lose on a position."
Indeed, Reagan makes little effort even to learn exactly what it is that his advisers are up to. Says one subordinate: "I doubt that he has actually been in Baker's or Meese's office more than two or three times since he has been President. He does not know in any specific way what most of us do or how we do it." The President gets some of his information about how his own Government works from his mail and the newspapers; he regularly clips an item or passes on a letter relating some individual's difficulties with the federal authorities. Says one aide: "He doesn't ask how Aid to Families with Dependent Children works. He asks why this mother of three is having trouble getting aid. He is a marvelous caseworker."
If the Reagan system is relaxed, though, it is also in its way rigidly enforced. Alexander Haig, for one, never caught on to the President's style. Accustomed to the Army chain of command, Haig constantly pressed Reagan for decisions on matters where his views clashed with those of the White House staff. Says one observer: "That was outside the rules." It was no small part of the reason why Reagan accepted Haig's resignation as Secretary of State before it had been formally offered.