Bush Keeps Brady in Job at Treasury : Sununu Reported as Front-Runner for Chief of Staff

President-elect George Bush on Tuesday made a second easy Cabinet choice, reappointing his old friend Nicholas F. Brady as secretary of Treasury, amid reports that New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu was now the favored candidate in a sharp backstairs competition for White House chief of staff.

The chief of staff job is critical for Bush in setting the tone of the White House he will run next year--and also has become the subject of feverish competition between Sununu and Bush’s current chief deputy, Craig Fuller.

The President-elect withheld official announcement of the chief of staff. But at nightfall a source close to the selection process said that Bush had moved toward Sununu, whose command decisions in the New Hampshire primaries kept Bush’s presidential hopes alive when his candidacy was foundering.

“I heard that’s going to be it,” said one source, noting that he was all but certain the decision is now firm.

Of Sununu’s recent trip to Florida to meet with Bush, the source said: “He didn’t go down there just for the ride.”

This source, a Republican close to the Bush campaign, also said that retired Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft now is “in pretty good shape” to be the new President’s national security adviser, a post he held in the Gerald R. Ford Administration.

The choice of Sununu would nip an emerging staff tussle in the newly elected President’s transition and place a Bush confidant known for his political skills next to the Oval Office.

Bush, after a four-day Florida beach vacation, returned to Washington to call on Brady, a friend for 14 years, to remain at Treasury and serve as “the chief economic spokesman for my administration.” Bush’s first Cabinet appointment was James A. Baker III, chairman of the President-elect’s campaign and a former treasury secretary, to be secretary of state.

Choice No Surprise

Virtually no one in Washington was surprised at the decision to reappoint Brady, which was preordained last summer when President Reagan asked the Wall Street investment banker to become secretary of the treasury and smooth the way for a transition should Bush win the election.

Bush said that his long-time friend, having served eight months as a U.S. senator from New Jersey, also “brings with him the valuable ability to work effectively with Congress as we work out and develop a budget deficit reduction plan.”

On the chief of staff appointment, Bush told an afternoon gathering of reporters: “I feel no time pressure on that.” But Bush added, apparently recognizing that his chief White House aide ultimately will influence the workings of all his personal staff, that he wants to resolve the matter “fairly soon.”

“I’d like to make that decision soon because I think that then that person can start working toward staffing the White House for what will be a very important early beginning there. We’ve got to have that in place.”

Judging from the single-minded intensity of rumors that no one attempted to disavow, Bush’s associates seem to have broken into one faction behind Californian Fuller, a proven administrator. On the other side is Sununu, known for his political acumen.

One popular round of speculation, which Bush neither denied nor confirmed, held that he is trying to find a way to split White House staff responsibilities between these two and a third close associate, pollster and campaign strategist Robert Teeter.

Teeter and Fuller are in charge of Bush’s transition office and met with the President-elect Tuesday afternoon. Sununu, who helped engineer Bush’s New Hampshire primary election victory last winter--a victory that may have saved the Bush candidacy--dined privately with the President-elect in Florida Monday night and then flew to Washington with him Tuesday.

On his arrival in Washington, Sununu was asked if he had been offered the job and replied only: “I’ll do whatever he needs.” Earlier in the week, though, Sununu called a press conference to say that he would not accept the job as energy secretary, which had been rumored as Bush’s wish.

Fuller, for his part, has been quoted as saying that there is considerable “jockeying” going on. And a source close to him confirmed “antagonism” between Fuller and Sununu.

“You keep reading stories suggesting that you are arguing, and eventually you are,” this source said.

Other Appointments Slowed

While the maneuvering for the chief of staff position continued, progress on other key appointments in the Bush Administration backed up. “The resumes are flowing like a sewer,” said one Bush campaign adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“We had 500 people on the foreign policy working groups, and all of them want jobs,” the adviser said. “Half of those people aren’t fit for ballast on a steamship.”

From all appearances, the President-elect was quite enjoying the swirl of interest and rumor-mongering that follows his every step.

One associate said that he thinks Bush has his mind made up on key staff decisions but is proceeding methodically because he enjoys being the center of international attention as well as because of concern for those associates who will not get what they want in the new lineup.

“The President-elect is taking some pleasure out of being his own man, and it’s clear that he’s got fixed in his own mind the cast of characters he wants,” this source said.

And the attention was unquestionably international. Bush and his vice president-elect, Sen. Dan Quayle, met for an hour Tuesday with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It marked their first visit with a foreign head of government since they were elected.

The capital also was alive with rumors about potential appointees.

U.S. Ambassador to Korea James R. Lilley, an old friend and CIA station chief in Beijing when Bush headed the U.S. Mission to China, was said to be in Washington, lobbying to be the director of central intelligence. Lilley has been mentioned as the likely next ambassador to China.

Staff writers Cathleen Decker, William J. Eaton, James Gerstenzang, Douglas Jehl, David Lauter, Jim Mann and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.