More a Ladle Than a Knife Weinberger's performance at the Pentagon earns poor reviews
It was the quintessential performance by a supremely confident yet self-effacing man, ever gracious in manner, polite in speech, but implacably stubborn. As Senator after Senator fired questions at him, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger coolly presented the Administration's case for the MX missile before the Armed Services Committee last week. Never once did Weinberger lose his temper or raise his voice. And no matter how heated the interrogation, Weinberger did not budge a millimeter from his position. "Once his mind is made up, he is impossible to bend," says a close associate at the Pentagon. "He is a gentle man with a rod of iron in his back."
Over the past two years, that gentle man with the iron spine has emerged, debatably, as the most influential member of the Reagan Cabinet. By dint of their position, he and Secretary of State George Shultz are the most powerful men in the Administration, but Weinberger enjoys a longstanding relationship with the President that Shultz can never match. As the man responsible for translating the defense imperatives of Ronald Reagan into dollars and cents, he is requesting the biggest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history, one that will cost $1.6 trillion over the next five years. Yet criticism is growing that Weinberger, by pushing so fervently to carry out Reagan's mandate to "rearm America," has been creating opposition in a frustrated Congress, which must either cut defense costs, slash social services or raise taxes to reduce the projected deficit of at least $150 billion in fiscal 1983. By serving Reagan too well, Weinberger may be serving him unwisely.
Despite the poor reviews, Weinberger retains the absolute confidence and trust of Ronald Reagan. The pair first got acquainted in 1966, when Reagan was running for Governor in California and Weinberger, a Harvard-trained lawyer living in San Francisco, was serving as state G.O.P. chairman. In 1968, Governor Reagan tapped Weinberger to be his state finance director. "My personal Disraeli," Reagan has called his aide. Weinberger left Sacramento less than two years later to join the Nixon Administration, where his budget-paring skills as Director of the Office of Management and Budget earned him the nickname "Cap the Knife." The two men, who have become warm personal friends over the years, mirror each other's qualities: a mellow California poise combined with a wide streak of stubbornness. The blend gives each man his air of serenity and self-assurance.
Shortly after his victory in 1980, when Reagan was mulling over appointments, he boasted that Weinberger could fill any Cabinet post. The Defense Secretary, for his part, is an extremely loyal team player who is fond of pointing out that Reagan is the "most underrated world leader of our time," and often compares his boss to Winston Churchill.