Reagan Recovery Called Spectacular : Aides Will Seek a Consensus in Decision Making

President Reagan’s senior aides anticipate a “light duty schedule” for the President at least until Labor Day and will attempt to reach consensus decisions without him in foreign affairs and domestic policy, a senior White House official said Sunday.

Looking to a six- to eight-week period while Reagan recovers from the intestinal surgery he underwent Saturday, the aide said that the President’s senior advisers will “try to spare him as much of the details as possible.”

Thus, while presidential aides, communications experts and Secret Service agents moved to establish a mini-White House at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center over the weekend, Reagan’s senior aides have developed a plan for the weeks ahead that leaves Reagan out of much of the daily give and take of White House deliberations.

Brief Sessions

Under the scenario worked out by Donald T. Regan, chief of staff, and other top aides, the White House will function normally in downtown Washington, while Reagan meets only briefly with aides in his hospital suite.

“We know there has to be a recovery period here and we don’t expect the President will be on the same type of schedule as in May and June,” when he visited Europe and made several out-of-town speeches on behalf of his tax plan, a White House aide said, using the Marine Corps terminology “light duty” schedule to describe Reagan’s agenda.

“He’ll certainly get his rest because that’s certainly important to his recovery,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said.

Meanwhile, a senior White House official disclosed Sunday that the demands of the President’s schedule dictated the timing of Reagan’s hospitalization, and it was further delayed by the Beirut hostage crisis. The need to remove a small polyp, or growth, from Reagan’s colon was known to doctors and the President in March, when he underwent a physical examination, the official said.

Reagan and his aides decided to put off the procedure until mid- to late June, after his European tour in May, and after a period of work and speeches on his tax revision proposals was completed in June.

However, according to a senior White House aide who spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name, the seizure of a planeload of Americans on TWA Flight 847 on June 14, and the ensuing 17-day crisis, forced a further postponement of the hospital visit--until last Friday. The medical procedure was placed on Reagan’s long-range schedule during the crisis, in the expectation that the Beirut incident would be resolved, or, at least, stabilized.

It was during the visit Friday that doctors found the larger intestinal growth that was removed in the more extensive surgery Saturday, and which will force the President into a curtailed schedule for six to eight weeks.

‘Business as Usual’

“Monday, with one big exception (the absence of the President) will be virtually business as usual at the White House,” Speakes said, reflecting the increased delegation of work to the senior White House staff. “We just took the weekend off to have surgery. We were in full business on Friday and we’ll be in full business on Monday.”

While Speakes has said that Reagan will be available to use his bedside telephone to do some congressional arm-twisting, particularly on budget matters, the view offered by a senior White House official was one of a President who will spend little time with his staff while hospitalized, and then work back into his White House routine only gradually.

At midday on Sunday, in the vicinity of the President’s hospital suite--a bedroom, sitting room, two bedrooms for doctors or aides, a conference room, a nurses’ station, an equipment room and a kitchen--there was none of the bustle associated with a major hospital or the corridors of the White House offices.

The highly polished floors gleamed and showed few marks of traffic, and three members of the Secret Service counterattack team, wearing bulletproof jackets and cradling submachine guns in their laps, sat near an entrance to the suite.

A White House switchboard and equipment to receive classified messages were installed at the hospital.

‘We Won’t Stay That Long’

Each day, after the 8 a.m. senior staff meeting at the White House, Regan, Robert C. McFarlane, the President’s assistant for national security affairs, and Speakes will make the 30-minute automobile drive from the White House to Bethesda to visit the hospital, Speakes said but added: “We won’t stay that long.”

Instead, the senior aides will work in their offices in the White House West Wing while the President recuperates, first at the hospital in this suburb north of Washington, and then in the executive mansion.

Over the next several weeks, Vice President George Bush, McFarlane, Regan, Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger will play the leading roles in foreign policy decisions, according to the blueprint drawn by White House officials.

On these issues, and on those involving domestic policy, decisions that can be made without the President will be made by the senior advisers, subject to ratification by Reagan.

The President’s senior advisers, along with the Cabinet, will “try to make as many decisions as we can without involving him, where we can get agreement,” one senior official said. Where consensus does not emerge, he said, advisers will offer “crisp, succinct” presentations to spare Reagan as much as possible of the need “to listen to debates of various people.”

Stockman Talks Continue

Regan, in an interview with a small group of reporters Sunday, said that the President’s hospitalization will not slow the search for a replacement for David A. Stockman, who has resigned as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Regan disclosed that two of those on the “short list” of possible replacements--Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige and former Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis--asked not to be considered, unless Reagan specifically wants one of them to take the job.

Regardless of the surgery, the summer period had been planned as a quiet two months for Reagan, who is still scheduled to visit his ranch northwest of Santa Barbara beginning about Aug. 14.

“If it had to happen, it couldn’t happen at a better time,” Regan said of the surgery.

As presidential aides clear Reagan’s schedule of meetings, speeches and ceremonial functions, one item--the visit a week from Tuesday by President Li Xiannian of China--remains on the calendar. Reagan was said to be planning to greet Li at the White House and take part in the state dinner for his guest, the highest ranking Chinese official, in terms of diplomatic protocol, to visit the United States.

Most lesser figures will have to wait to see Reagan, or settle for conferences with Bush or White House aides in the early days of the post-hospitalization period.

‘That’s What Staff Is for’

“That’s what his staff is for. That’s what his Cabinet is for. That’s what he has surrogates for,” the senior official said.

Taking over just such a role, Regan relayed the President’s dissatisfaction with the remark by Republican Sen. Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, that Reagan’s acceptance of budget concessions was “surrendering to the deficit.”

“He was disappointed in the remarks that he is walking away from the deficit,” Regan said.

Nancy Reagan, who has steered clear of direct involvement in presidential business, will fill in for her husband tonight, delivering the formal remarks at a White House diplomatic reception at which her husband was to have been the host.