The Presidency: Letting Regan Be Regan

There is no precedent. A corporate star becomes Secretary of the Treasury and & then White House chief of staff, a descending curve by normal calculation. Don Regan is not normal. “At dinner parties I sit below the salt now,” he says, a flash in his cunning eye. “There are a lot of interesting people there.”

A few days ago, he went to give the President the morning briefing. When the door to the Oval Office closed, just two men were inside. The import of the change struck Regan, who replaced the triumvirate of Meese, Deaver, Baker: quartet to duet. “We’ll have to get used to this,” he said to Reagan.

That has not been the only change. “Hey,” shouted Political Tactician Lyn Nofziger at Regan the other night, “you’ve been in the White House five weeks now and there has not been a single leak. I can’t stand it much longer.” Regan holds the press at arm’s distance, centralizes paper flow, assigns staff authority meticulously–and thus could spot any big leaker. Benign terror reigns in the back corridors. Information is sorted, compressed, confined. “I’m the small end of the funnel,” Regan explains pointedly. The policy struggle around the President has been diminished. Regan is the lone briefer on many issues. He has urged more frequent news conferences for the President, mostly to keep him current and sharp. Regan loves the line, “If we let Regan be Regan, Reagan will be Reagan.”

Regan seems invigorated by the new challenge. His oxfords glisten with the kind of shine only a former Marine lieutenant colonel can give them. He’s charging uphill, the way he did at Okinawa. “No school solutions here,” he has muttered to intimates in the White House, invoking a Marine battlefield lament when they faced situations never covered in training. “Some say I can’t really succeed in this political environment, and maybe they are right,” he once mused. He does not believe that at all. He’ll win, or fall among piled-up corpses.

“It’s an ear job, not an eye job,” Regan says. He is constantly being hustled. His role is to hear the pure tones, to sort out the voices that are most often right and get them to the President. Partly this is a matter of mastering new information. Regan found that the Ortega they talked about at the White House was Nicaragua’s leftist leader and not Katherine Ortega, Treasurer of the U.S., who signs the money. On TV he was taken aback when asked what the Administration planned to do about AIDS, not the balance of trade.

Perhaps his toughest task is to back off when being pressured. The stall is sometimes good in basketball and the presidency. When the heat was on the White House to placate farmers and Iowa’s Governor Terry Branstad was pleading in the Oval Office for a 30-day extension for farm credit sign-ups, the President, Secretary of Agriculture John Block and Regan all melted. Branstad announced the decision on the White House steps to huzzahs from the farmers. A couple of hours later the beleaguered Senate Majority Leader, Robert Dole, rose in fury on the Hill and rocketed his displeasure downtown. So, accused Dole, the hold-the-line troops in the Senate were supposed to shoulder the bad news while the boys in the White House handed out the goodies. Regan was chastened. He should have run through his checklist and brought Dole in on the act to protect the President.

Coming from a veteran Wall Street buccaneer, that solicitude for the President is remarkable in itself, and may be another legacy from the Marines. Regan knows he has a commanding officer. Up in the family quarters a couple of weeks ago, the President ventured that Reagan and Regan probably were related. “Not so loud,” said Regan. “If we are accused of nepotism one of us will have to go, and I know who it will be.”