Bush’s Choice for Budget Director Has Two Images : Darman: Brilliant, Pragmatic--and Ruthless

The man President-elect George Bush has named to be his new budget director is widely acknowledged to be a pragmatic, brilliant policy strategist with a proven ability to get things done--and a reputation as a ruthless and abrasive infighter.

Hard-charging, quick-thinking and witty, with a penchant for detail, Richard G. Darman, deputy secretary of the Treasury until last year, was clearly one of the brightest intellects in the Reagan Administration.

“Dick Darman is one of the most talented people I know,” says Michael J. Boskin, the Stanford University economist who is expected to be named chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers later this month.

But the same Darman has a second image--as a relentless, vain and sometimes arrogant bureaucratic adversary who is a master at manipulating the capital’s power-levers, does not suffer fools very lightly and can intimidate even his most formidable opponents.

“There are a lot of people who don’t like Dick Darman, but none of them is going to want to speak on the record for fear of what the consequences might be,” says a former Reagan Administration colleague, who insisted that his name not be used.

“On the other hand, there are a lot people who do like Dick Darman who are going to be wary of speaking on the record as well.”

Emotional Reactions

The new budget director-designate has sparked some emotional reactions over the last several years:

--Darman’s skill in political intrigue has so frustrated his adversaries that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) frequently complained of a suspected “Darman ploy” whenever an Administration tax proposal put his panel on the spot.

--Former White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., during his days as Senate majority leader early in the Reagan Administration, coined the phrase “Darmanesque” to describe a political maneuver that is too clever by half.

--Sondra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador, once slapped her social secretary after hearing that Darman would not be able to attend a dinner party. Gotlieb later apologized to her social secretary, but the incident only enhanced Darman’s status.

Behind the Scenes

What has made the Darman legend even more impressive, flaws and all, is that at least until now, he has done it all from behind the scenes.

He worked as James A. Baker III’s deputy when Baker was Treasury secretary and, before that, White House chief of staff. And during the administrations of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, he was an assistant to Baker, then deputy commerce secretary, and to Elliot L. Richardson when he was attorney general and secretary of health, education and welfare.

At Treasury, Darman played the key role in crafting the Reagan Administration’s strategy for pushing the 1986 tax overhaul bill through Congress. He devised the bulk of the game plan that Baker used to drive down the value of the dollar and to set up new international machinery for coordinating the industrial countries’ economic policies. And earlier, working for Baker at the Reagan White House, he helped devise domestic strategy.

Fake License Plates

For years he was so closely identified with Baker that former White House lieutenant Michael K. Deaver once adorned Darman’s car with a set of fake license plates reading simply: “BAKER AIDE.” Darman is said to have been furious when he discovered the prank.

But now, as director of Bush’s Office of Management and Budget, Darman will be emerging from the shadows into a limelight that would be difficult for anyone to fill.

He will be the new President’s point man in hammering out a compromise with Congress on how to reduce the government’s $155-billion budget deficit--a venture that at the very least will require patience, tact and extraordinary negotiating skill.

And he will have to work deftly to maintain at least the appearance that the new President is keeping his “read my lips--no new taxes” pledge in the face of some difficult budgetary arithmetic.

The new budget director-designate would not respond to telephone inquiries Monday, but he told a closed session of the Council on Foreign Relations last week that the new Administration should begin intensive negotiations with Congress as soon as possible in a bid to work out the major elements of a budget compromise by June.

Although many of the specifics would not be ironed out until later, the accord would be designed to send a signal to the financial markets and to other nations that the United States finally is serious about bringing the deficit down. Worry about the deficit has been a major cause of recent turmoil in the markets.

Darman is expected to begin quietly sounding out key lawmakers on the budget issue as he makes the rounds on Capitol Hill over the next few weeks in preparation for his confirmation hearings. The budget director’s job, now a Cabinet-level post, requires approval by the Senate.

The scion of a family of prosperous New England textile manufacturers, Darman received his bachelor’s and business degrees from Harvard, where he became imbued with an idealism about what government could accomplish.

After joining Richardson’s staff at HEW in 1970, Darman served three GOP administrations in six Cabinet departments over a 13-year period, developing a passion--and a skill--at “creative problem-solving.”

He left the Treasury Department in 1987 for a position as an investment banker with Shearson Lehman Bros. in Washington. During the Jimmy Carter Administration, he was on the Harvard faculty.

A witty, disarmingly charming man to those he takes into his confidence, Darman is a workaholic by day who maintains a close, strictly private family life. His children’s schoolroom paintings taped on his office walls are his lone public gesture to sentiment.

Darman’s appointment to the budget post is one he has long sought. The budget director holds the reins of power in almost any administration, and this year the budget deficit is the Administration’s primary problem.