Calendar Pressures Weigh on Him : Reagan’s Term Nears End--Exodus Begins

Back in October, five seasons away from Jan. 20, 1989, when Ronald and Nancy Reagan will move out of the White House, a representative of the First Family approached the federal government’s General Services Administration with this question: What government funding, the Reagans’ representative wanted to know, according to a congressional source, would be available to pay for the expense of their move home to California at the end of the President’s term?

Even as negotiators are preparing for a new round of arms control talks, as officials are working on a new budget and others are talking about a springtime summit meeting in Moscow, President Reagan is facing the winding down of his Administration--illustrated by the grand and the small, by concerns about the nitty-gritty details of his departure and by such big-picture items as concern for his political legacy.

Aides Packing Up

All around the President, in the agencies of the government and down the corridors of the White House, people are packing up and departing--if not in the exodus likely to begin next autumn or even next summer, then in a trickle that is not expected to abate.

Mrs. Reagan--after a year of personal sadness and political turmoil marked by her mother’s death, her own breast cancer surgery and the President’s loss of political favor in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal--is looking forward to the end of the fishbowl life in the White House, a senior White House official acknowledged, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Nevertheless, this official and others working just beyond the Oval Office in the White House West Wing are preparing a busy 1988 for Reagan: a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Moscow, at which the President hopes to sign a strategic arms control agreement, in late May or early June; the annual summit conference of the major industrial democracies, which in 1988 will take place in Canada during the third week of June, and, possibly, a visit in late February or early March to Mexico. A trip to Western Europe and, possibly, one to the Far East also are being considered.

‘Teacher Role’

But--as he greets 1988 in Rancho Mirage, surrounded by longtime acquaintances and political backers and buoyed by a surge in popularity fueled by his December summit meeting with Gorbachev--Reagan, in the eighth year of his presidency, is entering what Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. calls “the teacher role” and will be trying on the mantle of a senior statesman.

His mood, senior aides say, is particularly upbeat after a rousing finish to 1987 that included the Washington summit talks with Gorbachev, a budget agreement with Congress and a friendly reception for his nomination of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy to the Supreme Court after two unsuccessful nominations.

“He feels the spirit and cooperation that manifested itself in the last six to seven weeks are something you can build on, as you make progress on START (the acronym for a new strategic arms reduction treaty), as you address elements in the economy as a follow-up on the budget agreement, and that he can work with a group of congressmen and senators, both in international relations as well as domestic policy,” said a senior White House official who accompanied Reagan to Palm Springs.

In his sessions with the President, said the official, who asked not to be identified, “what I have heard him talking about is looking forward to this next year to put the cap on the Reagan presidency” rather than “post-presidency” activity.

To Come Out ‘Flying’

“He wants to come out of the blocks flying,” he said.

In referring to the Iran-Contra affair, which enveloped the Reagan presidency a year ago, the official stated:

“Last year at this time it was the doldrums, and he’s come through the firestorm and ended up the year in very good shape to begin 1988 and finish the major agenda items.”

But, against this backdrop of a seemingly full agenda despite the dwindling days in office--a period in which Reagan seeks to project the image of what a senior aide called a President “involved and fully engaged in all the issues”--the pressures of the presidential election are beginning to swirl around him and the departing senior and mid-level officials of his Administration.

On a cheerless and rainy afternoon in September, senior members of the White House staff joined President and Mrs. Reagan in the Roosevelt Room across a corridor from the Oval Office to bid farewell to a colleague who was leaving Washington to begin a job with the giant financial investment firm of Merrill Lynch & Co. in Princeton, N. J.

But the friendly, informal gathering marked not so much the end of one White House career as the beginning of the departures that occur at senior levels of an Administration whose months are numbered--the start, in effect, of a transition that will not end until the summer of 1989, six months into a new Administration, when a new President’s team is in place.

“They’re almost textbook stories. You may clock it at 18 months (from the end of the term) that the lame-duckness starts in,” said Samuel Kernell, a professor of political science at UC San Diego and an authority on presidential staffs and on the presidency and public opinion.

The shifts are taking place at all levels of government. Reagan enters 1988 with a new defense secretary, Frank C. Carlucci; a new labor secretary, Ann Dore McLaughlin; a new transportation secretary, James H. Burnley IV--each replacing veterans who quit and each considered Washington veterans themselves--and a new commerce secretary, C. William Verity Jr., replacing the late Malcolm Baldrige.

More Changes Seen

And a senior White House staff member, reviewing the departures that have already occurred, said that “it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you had a couple more changes in the Cabinet and other staff.”

Although other authoritative sources close to Reagan say the game of musical Cabinet chairs has come to an end, there remains talk that Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III might depart within six months.

Sources close to him say he continues to be challenged by his job and that he would be unlikely to quit until the summer, when he would move into a senior position in George Bush’s presidential campaign if the vice president is the Republican presidential nominee. Of course, Baker, a Bush loyalist, could respond to pressure from the vice president if he is needed sooner for political chores.

In addition, a congressional staff member who studies presidential transitions observed: “There’s been a lot of turnover at the sub-Cabinet level at all the departments.”

Cashing in on Influence

“There’s a tremendous premium to cash in now while the Administration is still sitting, because you can still have some influence you can market. There’s kind of an early-out phenomenon, get out while Reagan is still known as the President,” said the congressional source, an authority on the federal bureaucracy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It will be difficult to find replacements, “except for people who don’t have anything better to do or who want to advance their credentials,” he said. So, said a senior White House official, “you combine functions and pool your resources.”

But, within the White House itself, no major changes are said to be expected by senior officials. Chief of Staff Baker has said he will be around “to turn out the lights” when the President leaves office. A White House wag--referring to deputy staff chief Kenneth L. Duberstein, who is said to be interested in Baker’s job and who also has vowed to remain until the end--remarked: “Kenny will be there to turn them back on.”

Bureaucracy’s Power Grows

The impact of the personnel exodus is felt in several ways:

--As senior political appointees leave the government departments and agencies, the power of the bureaucracy grows, with top-level jobs going unfilled or being taken by inexperienced appointees or career employees who are unprepared, unwilling or uninterested in fighting institutional pressures applied by longtime agency employees seeking to take advantage of any leadership vacuum.

“There are some indications the bureaucracies are becoming more aggressive in reasserting institutional interests,” said Gary Bauer, Reagan’s assistant for domestic policy. But he added: “I don’t think the White House is going to get soft.”

--Major policy initiatives evaporate without skilled leaders to shepherd them through the government. “You can’t get anything done; these departments don’t operate on their own. They do need leadership,” the congressional source said.

--And, a former White House staff member said of those officials who stay on, “there’s a certain amount of steam that goes out of anybody’s everyday efforts when they know that, in a real short time, they’ll be leaving office. The tendency is to mark time.”

End-of-Era Image

But, perhaps most important, a senior White House official remarked, is the end-of-an-era image left by a string of departures.

If there are too many, he said, “you give the impression the Administration is over, and you can’t have that.”

However, according to another senior official, “as far as being able to move public policy and put an imprint on where you want to go, you’ve had seven years to do that.”

Now, he said, “you’re looking at a political environment” in which competing pressures and Congress’ election-year distractions may preclude major legislative advances.

Even before the election year arrived this morning, the White House staff was feeling itself caught between the two leading Republican candidates: the vice president and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, whose active support is needed to help Reagan win some remaining legislative victories, including the ratification of the U.S.-Soviet treaty banning medium-range land-based nuclear missiles.

One day after Dole visited the White House to announce his support for the treaty--executing a deft political maneuver that, Bush partisans complained, resulted in Reagan’s being used as a campaign prop with the help of the White House staff--a senior White House official lashed out at the vice president. He said staff chief Baker was deeply angered by the accusation from the Bush camp that he was aiding the Dole campaign by arranging the visit.

Bush was out of town campaigning that day, and the White House staff member cracked sarcastically: “I think he’s still president of the Senate. I guess he’s lobbying senators, to help with the budget.”

Animosity Cropping Up

“Little did I know that I’d have to check with the vice president before I did anything,” he said, reflecting the animosity that is cropping up in senior Republican circles while the President adheres to his professed neutrality.

“You need to be very, very careful that everything you do is not misinterpreted,” said Frank Donatelli, Reagan’s assistant for political affairs. “You’re coming into a highly charged environment, and there are going to be complaints.

“Obviously, you have to involve the vice president and the Senate minority leader. We hope the intramural spats can be kept to a minimum,” he said.

So far, he added, the bickering “hasn’t gotten out of hand.”

The importance of keeping such infighting under control is more than cosmetic. Rather, it goes to the heart of Reagan’s ability to withstand the pressures of the calendar, political scientist Kernell said.

“For him to be successful, it requires his keeping the Republican candidates toeing his line. It requires that his policies not be repudiated before he leaves,” Kernell said.

Liability for Candidate

However, an Administration that follows a controversial path could become a liability for a Republican candidate, one senior White House official said, stating: “As we get further into 1988, there will be a natural impulse for Republican contenders to wish the White House will stop doing things altogether.”

So, said another senior Reagan aide, forecasting a year in which the President’s public role will be focused on broad issues, Reagan will be “talking about where you’ve been and where you want to go,” rather than expecting tangible progress in such areas as cutting taxes or passing a balanced-budget amendment.

Specifically, the White House goals for 1988 include a successful summit meeting in Moscow, a Republican victory in the presidential election and, tied to such an outcome, “an economy that is still growing as you approach the election--and beyond that,” the senior aide said.

A trip to Moscow, particularly one in which another arms control treaty is signed, is seen as one of the few antidotes to the evaporation of Reagan’s power as the election approaches.

“It’s an opportunity for him to do something in an area where he does have a lot of control over the situation. It’s an area where he has the prerogatives,” Kernell said. “Arms control is one of the things that are not affected by his being a lame duck. It’s an attractive policy issue. It means that, where everything else is shutting down, this isn’t.”

Expects Senate Victories

The White House is hoping to be able to take advantage of at least two expected victories in the Senate--the confirmation of Kennedy and ratification of the medium-range arms treaty--to project a positive image, and the President is expected to outline themes for the year in the State of the Union address he is tentatively scheduled to deliver on Jan. 25. Among the issues he will discuss, aides said, is the role of education and technology in the United States and the part they can play in improving employment.

The speech will “lay out the agenda for 1988 and beyond,” a senior White House official said, stressing “and beyond” and saying: “He wants to set out goals and objectives for the country through the year 2000.”

But, mostly, another official said, as he leaves political office, Reagan will address “the basic themes that have been the hallmark of this President for his whole political career . . . presenting his view of America.”

Thus, he will focus, in a broad sense, on what he views as foreign policy successes during his Administration, the economy and his efforts to give the presidency a greater voice in the annual struggles with Congress over the federal budget.

Avoiding Budget Bitterness

After the protracted effort to reach a budget agreement in 1987, Reagan in 1988 will focus on “how to make the process run smoothly and avoid the bitterness and confrontation that evolves,” the White House official said.

A former White House official who has maintained contact with his colleagues there said Reagan will “focus on what his legacy is” and that “he might well want to try to define the 1988 election in that context.”

White House officials and others, seeking to maintain the authority of this presidency as far into the election year as possible, say that, if Reagan is a lame duck, it is a condition marked only by the calendar and not by a sharp drop in his activities.