Regan Moving to Consolidate His Power Base

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said Friday he will not fire anybody when he takes over the White House staff, but he expects a number of personnel changes as he moves to consolidate the power President Reagan once vested in his three closest aides.

“I’m not trying to grab power,” Regan told a group of reporters. But he left no doubt that all previous power-sharing arrangements are off and that after he takes over, everyone on the staff will report to the President through him.

Discussing the surprise job swap he will make with White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, Regan said the functions performed by the White House “Big Three” will still be performed, but “I’ll be doing the whole thing now. Others will be reporting in to me and then to the President, rather than directly.”

How ‘Big Three’ Operated Throughout Reagan’s first term, Baker, Michael K. Deaver, deputy chief of staff, and Edwin Meese III, counselor, divided the staff operation among themselves, and each had direct access to the Oval Office. Deaver’s decision to leave government was announced last week, and Meese is Reagan’s nominee to be attorney general.

Regan, whose move to the White House must await Senate confirmation of Baker’s nomination to be Treasury secretary, said he is studying all White House operations and will talk to present staff members before deciding what changes to make.

“I’m not going to fire anybody,” the former Wall Street executive said, but he added, “there will be changes in personnel made.”

When asked if he foresees a role for U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who has announced plans to leave her present post and is a favorite candidate of hard-line conservatives to succeed Meese as a White House policy adviser, Regan replied, “Possibly. I haven’t talked to Jeane about anything, and I don’t know what her particular plans are.”

Regan, whose bluntness and quick temper are legend in his own department, bridled at a suggestion that his own deputy, R. T. (Tim) McNamar, was pushed out Thursday to make room for Baker’s deputy, Richard G. Darman, whom Reagan intends to nominate for deputy Treasury secretary.

“No, Mr. McNamar was not fired, nor pushed out,” Regan said.

“When the surprise announcement of the switch was made, Tim and I talked about his future, and he said, ‘I’ll stay with you, Don, through the transition, and then I want to go.’ Was he pushed out? Hell no.”

Regan praised McNamar’s loyalty and performance, particularly in handling the first international debt crisis involving Mexico, and said the deputy had told him as early as last November that he was anxious to return to a better-paying job in private life.

With obvious displeasure at the White House announcement naming Darman before McNamar’s resignation had been announced, Regan said, “I won’t comment on the way it was handled in the White House.”

Laughing when he said even his wife wondered why he wanted to take on a job in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the White House, the 66-year-old Regan said he concocted the idea because he knew Baker was tired of the job and thought the President needed someone from inside the Administration to take over.

“I saw the vacuum coming and felt that someone who had a knowledge of staff work and how to handle staff and the like and the issues had to get in there and in there quick,” he said. “We’re changing here on the fly.

“There’s no time out . . . . To have a stranger come in, I mean someone who has not been part of the Administration at this point, would be difficult for him to pick up the threads, as we all did in 1981.”

Regan said, “Baker told me over a year ago how tired he was and he had this burnt-out feeling.”

As a former chairman of Merrill Lynch, the giant Wall Street financial conglomerate, Regan said he was more accustomed to job swaps than persons in government.

“I did it at Merrill Lynch, switch executives from one sub (subsidiary) to another or one department to another,” he said.

On another subject, Regan said budget deficits are the No. 1 problem facing this nation, but added that lawmakers who want to reduce red ink by freezing Social Security cost-of-living increases would get no encouragement from the White House.

“Let’s get it straight,” Regan said. “If there were a bipartisan majority of the Congress in favor of anything, the President would have to take a look at it. That’s only natural.”

But when legislators mention action on Social Security, “What we’re telling them is, ‘If you decide to do that, you’re on your own,’ ” Regan said.