(3 of 4)
As Pentagon chief, Weinberger has been a disappointment to many people both in the Administration and on Capitol Hill. No one questions his appetite for work: he generally rises at 5:30 a.m., jogs for 15 minutes, is at his desk by 7:30 and stays for the next twelve hours or so before packing his briefcase with papers to pore over at home. For relaxation, he spends an occasional night out at the National Symphony and squeezes in a weekend trip now and then to his vacation home on Mount Desert Island in Maine. But some Reagan aides and G.O.P. Senators had hoped that he would live up to his knife-wielding reputation and, while rebuilding the nation's defense as Reagan wishes, still find savings in the Pentagon that would cut the budget deficit. Instead, Weinberger gave too much control of the budget to the individual services, then tended to accept all the major weapons on the Pentagon's "wish list." Says Democratic Representative Albert Gore Jr., who helped lead the assault on the MX: "He's lost all credibility. Instead of Cap the Knife, he's Cap the Ladle."
In addition, Weinberger is criticized for failing to come up with an overall, coherent defense strategy that would at least justify the staggering costs. Without a national strategy, Weinberger cannot know if, say, the Navy will need 600 ships by 1990 or if the Air Force is asking for the right mix of expensive F-15s and cheaper F-16s. Even a hard-liner like Melvin Laird, who served as Secretary of Defense for Richard Nixon, questions the sense behind the vast sums. "The Navy is going wild by making all these commitments on ships," Laird says. "It hasn't been proved to me that you need a Navy that large. I don't think we can afford it."
Beyond these complaints, however, there is the larger criticism that Weinberger remains an amateur in defense matters. A poor administrator who does not run the Pentagon on a day-to-day basis, he relies on others, most notably Deputy Secretary Frank Carlucci, to plan, budget and analyze. Weinberger, unlike some of his predecessors, such as Robert McNamara and Harold Brown, does not immerse himself in the details of his job, and thus he is not as knowledgeable about his department's programs as he should be. The result: he is much more likely to okay the recommendations handed him.
Perhaps the most damning charge leveled at Weinberger is that, amid all his dire warnings of Soviet intentions and strength, he has lost public support for the defense buildup that he so fervently pushes, as reflected in last month's election. "By being so insistent and unwilling to compromise, he has hurt the consensus for the defense budget," says an Administration official. "He's a great disappointment."