Delegates Authority : Shift Shows How President Relies on Staff

More than any of his modern predecessors, President Reagan relies heavily on his staff for guidance and advice--even when it comes to deciding who that staff should be. And there is no better example of this than the way he went about selecting his new chief of staff, Donald T. Regan.

Without consulting the President, Treasury Secretary Regan and White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III decided that they wanted to swap jobs. They worked out the details with Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver, whose influence on Reagan far exceeds his title. When Deaver recommend the switch to Reagan, the President approved--without any agonizing.

“This President always has been a heavy delegator of authority, has been for 18 years,” noted one senior Administration official who has been closely associated with Reagan throughout his public career.

Basic Paradox

That could make Regan one of the most powerful White House chiefs of staff in recent times. But Regan, like Baker before him, will have to contend with a basic paradox of Reagan’s leadership style: Despite his proclivity to delegate power on many matters, he decides the issues dearest to his heart according to his own instincts and ideology, regardless of his staff’s advice.

Baker, for example, has led a virtually unanimous White House staff chorus this year urging Reagan to raise taxes and slow down the U.S. military buildup to control the increasingly massive federal deficit in the 1986 fiscal year. But with relatively minor exceptions, the President has consistently rejected this advice.

And although Reagan did not seem to blink twice before swapping his chief of staff for his Treasury secretary, he has on many previous occasions resisted Baker’s and Deaver’s urgent advice to fire controversial appointees who were causing his presidency political embarrassment.

“He depends a heck of a lot on his staff, but he very much makes the decision himself,” said another White House official, who also has known Reagan since his days as California’s governor.

The Regan-Baker swap illustrated the more common side of the Reagan paradox--a presidential decision strongly influenced by his staff that left official Washington stunned.

But at the same time, the episode reminded some who have long known the President that he is so invariably self-confident that he sometimes does not seem to care very much who his top advisers are.

Regan will assume a position that Baker fought for without success during most of the President’s first term: clear pre-eminence within the White House staff. Baker shared power with Deaver, a frequent ally, and counselor Edwin Meese III, regularly an adversary, and his influence was further eroded in 1982 and 1983 when another adversary, William P. Clark, was added to the White House power-sharing arrangement as the President’s national security adviser.

Baker could have had the undiluted chief of staff’s job for himself because Meese is in line to become attorney general and Deaver is resigning to accept a high-paying public relations job. Clark also is leaving his post as secretary of the Interior, which he has held since 1983, to return to his California ranch. But Baker, after four years as chief of staff, longed to head a major Cabinet department.

“The way this is being set up, chief of staff probably will be the one job in Washington (below the President) that’s more powerful than the one Regan’s now got,” said a White House official, speaking on condition that he not be identified. “The chief of staff will be telling Cabinet secretaries what to do.”

This adviser, echoing the view of other Administration officials, added that “Regan and Reagan are closer philosophically” than are the President and Baker--another important factor that should enhance the new chief of staff’s influence.

Additionally, it was pointed out, “Regan is one of the few members of the Administration who is in the Reagan social circle.” The Treasury secretary, for example, is one of the President’s few appointees who get invited to spend New Year’s Eve with him in Palm Springs.

Started With Regan

White House spokesman Larry Speakes quoted Regan on Tuesday as telling him that “I’m the author” of the swap. According to Speakes, Regan went to Baker “several days ago” and said he would be willing to switch jobs if Deaver did not want to become chief of staff.

There had been speculation that Deaver might stay in the White House--and postpone making big money on the outside--if he could get the top job. And Speakes said: “If I were a betting man, I’d bet 10-1 he could have gotten it if he’d wanted it.”

But Deaver decided he would rather leave, perhaps remembering what happened 15 months ago when--in another illustration of the Reagan paradox--he and Baker went to the President with an earlier proposed job shuffle.

In that case, Baker asked to become the President’s national security adviser--replacing Clark, who had just announced that he was leaving for the Interior Department--and Deaver would have become the chief of staff. Reagan tentatively approved this Baker-Deaver plan on the spot but later reneged when opposition mounted from Clark and Meese, among others.

This time, Baker said he would not go to Reagan suggesting the job switch. “He did not want to appear to be engineering a deal for himself,” Speakes said.

Neither did Regan want to propose the idea personally to Reagan, believing such action would be presumptuous. So they asked Deaver to take the idea to the President.

First Deaver announced his own resignation last Thursday “to clear the way,” Speakes said. But Deaver did not tell the President that this was a major reason that he desired to move up his long-expected resignation announcement, Speakes said.

After more discussions and refinements by Baker and Regan, Deaver walked into the Oval Office with the proposed job swap Monday--at least 12 days after it originally had been hatched.

The President replied, upon learning of it for the first time, that he wanted to talk to both Regan and Baker separately--and he did, five hours apart. Then he told Deaver that the idea sounded fine to him and publicly announced his approval before a national television audience on Tuesday morning. As a bonus for Regan, the President gave his new chief of staff Cabinet-level status--something that Baker did not have.

“He’s a known quantity,” one longtime Reagan intimate said of Regan when asked how a President could select a chief of staff so quickly.

An anonymous White House official added: “Both Regan and Baker are very close to the President. These are not two outsiders scheming.”

White House and other Administration officials familiar with Regan were singing his praises Tuesday after the announcement.

“Listen, this is a great stroke,” said one senior Administration official who did not want to be quoted by name. “The White House has been in disarray. This should breathe new life into it. We have a new beginning.”

The official said he hoped and expected that Regan would allow Cabinet officers to have more influence with Reagan than Baker and Deaver have permitted.

A White House official, also speaking anonymously, said that Regan would be more blunt but less Machiavellian than Baker.

“Baker moves from point A to point B with as little ruffling as necessary,” he said. “Regan moves from point A to point B without considerations for personalities and bruised feelings--let’s get the job done. I think it’s good.”