GOP Spokesman Black: A True Believer Steps In : Republicans: Charles Black, who stepped into the national committee spot for the ailing Atwater, possesses finesse--and toughness--for troubled times.

Back during the heat of the 1984 presidential campaign, at a high-level GOP strategy session, somebody came up with the dubious notion of dogging Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro’s every step. A “truth squad,” dedicated to refuting whatever she said about military policy, would shadow her relentlessly, even in Forest Hills, N.Y., her own back yard.

Lee Atwater was in the meeting, and so was Charles R. Black, the GOP campaign strategist recently named by President George Bush to replace the ailing Atwater as spokesman for the Republican National Committee. Atwater, who didn’t say much, sat smirking with delight as the “truth squad” plan was cooked up.

Then Black spoke up. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “It would make us look like a bunch of damned terrorists.”

“Charlie’s right,” Atwater said. “Let’s not do it.”

There are a number of ways to interpret this story. A participant in the meeting, however, warns against drawing the conclusion that the GOP’s new senior strategist is a softie. “The point is that Charlie is one of the few people (Atwater) has ever been willing to defer to,” he says. “Atwater has deferred to Charlie because he loves the political fight every bit as much as Lee does. But he also knows when to push the fight and when not to. He’s a better politician.”

Black is also far more ideological than Atwater, committed to hard-right policies in a way his predecessor, now undergoing treatment for a brain tumor, never was.

Atwater, who is not expected to return to his former job as RNC chairman but still holds that title, was first and foremost a political mechanic. Black is a true believer--not encouraging news to liberal Democrats or to more mainstream Republicans who feel that, for too long, Bush has turned his Administration’s political operations over to the GOP’s hard-liners.

A longtime protege of Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Black, 42, came up through the ranks of Young Americans for Freedom, served as political director of the RNC in the late 1970s and was founding chairman of the controversial and once-powerful National Conservative Political Action Committee.

A courtly sort, he is amiable, unassuming and tactful. As Roger Ailes once put it: “Charlie’s the kind of guy who, if he came home and found somebody making out with his wife on a rainy day, he’d break the guy’s umbrella and ask him to leave--then would have him killed a year later. Lee would blow the house up.” Another former associate offers a less favorable assessment: “He’s very folksy, but he’s tough. Charlie will pat you on the back one moment, stab you in the back the next.”

There are other reasons to be leery of this slick operator, however--reasons having to do with conflict of interest and, as such, transcending matters of personality and political style. For some years Black has served as founding partner in Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, an Alexandria, Va., firm of lobbyists and campaign consultants.

Black has not severed his ties with the firm since taking the GOP post and, by his own admission, “I spend about half my time at the firm and half at the RNC.” That alone should raise eyebrows, considering that the firm represents clients, both foreign and domestic, with serious matters before the Bush Administration.

According to one recent report, the firm estimated revenues of more than $5 million in 1989--most from corporations and foreign governments. At one time or another, Black and his associates have represented the governments of Zaire and Kenya; the political party of Philippine Vice President Salvador Laurel, and Jonas Savimbi and his Angola rebels. The firm has handled World Bank debt negotiations for Peru and Somalia and advanced the interests of Donald Trump, Bethlehem Steel Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Trans World Airlines and the Tobacco Institute.

The firm first earned national notoriety, however, in June, 1989, when partner Paul Manafort admitted to the House Government Operations Committee, then investigating scandals within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that he had engaged in “influence-peddling” on behalf of clients seeking HUD contracts. The firm had earned, by one account, more than $400,000 from such clients. In the uproar following Manafort’s admission, Black flipped through his reliable Rolodex and managed to quiet the storm.

On other occasions, the firm has courted controversy. Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly’s political division, where Atwater is a partner, has specialized in running the campaigns of so-called New Right candidates--campaigns characterized by negative, often misleading, advertising.

Partner Roger Stone seems to relish his image as a no-holds-barred campaigner. In a 1982 campaign for Tommy Evans against Delaware Rep. Thomas Carper, Stone tried to label the incumbent a wife-beater, the kind of tactic for which the New Republic labeled Stone Washington’s “state-of-the-art political sleazeball.” Stone, who with Black was one of NCPAC’s founders, has a long history of such misdeeds. One of the “dirty tricksters” unearthed by the Senate Watergate Committee, Stone likes to think of himself, according to one friend, as “the next generation’s Roy Cohn.”

It is a measure of Black’s political skills that he has managed to operate within such an unseemly crowd and still maintain reasonably affable relations with the outside world. He is attuned to personal and political sensitivities in a way Atwater never was, which should come in handy as off-year elections approach.

The issues--the Middle East, the savings-and-loan scandal, new taxes and further budget cuts--are explosive and will require all the finesse the GOP can command. The Republicans, needless to say, have much to answer for and a mixed record to defend. One truism of political life Black understands well is that the best defense can be a good offense. He demonstrated that knowledge--and his considerable clout within the Administration--when he helped convince Bush to return from his Kennebunkport vacation in mid-August and lambaste the Democrats for the budget impasse.

It was a cloddish gambit, coming as it did when the Democrats were solidly backing the President’s Middle East policies. But whether the GOP learned anything from the blunder isn’t known. Black certainly didn’t. “I’m one of those who urged the President to go public with (the attack on the Democrats),” Black admitted as the budget summit convened, insisting the strategy worked. “They’re negotiating, aren’t they?” he asked.

The answer, of course, is that they were. But the question was rhetorical. And the premise behind it--that the attack was what drove the Democrats to the table--is laughable. As long as the President allows such thinking to influence his own, however, the results might not be so funny.