Yeutter to Be Bush Domestic Policy Adviser

President Bush on Friday named Republican Party chief Clayton K. Yeutter to be his domestic policy adviser and recommended that political consultant Richard N. Bond succeed Yeutter as GOP chairman.

Bush made the announcement as he addressed the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee.

Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Yeutter’s formal new title would be counselor to the President for domestic policy and that he would have Cabinet status.

Republican sources said Yeutter’s appointment was part of a move by White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner to infuse life into what has been a largely moribund domestic policy operation.

“It will be an important position and we look to him for dynamic leadership,” Fitzwater said.

At the same time, the sources said, the installation of Bond puts a better-regarded political professional at the helm of the GOP in an election year.

The RNC was expected to ratify Bush’s choice of Bond as the new party chairman today. Bond, 41, is a veteran Republican consultant who worked for Bush in his 1980 and 1988 presidential campaigns.

A longtime Bush adviser, Bond had declined a role in the President’s reelection campaign in part out of a hope that he would be named the party chief.

Yeutter, a former secretary of agriculture and U.S. trade representative, has held the party chairman’s post a year. He succeeded Lee Atwater, who died of a brain tumor.

Fitzwater said that Yeutter would oversee all domestic and economic policy at the White House.

While thought to have been a success as U.S. trade representative, Yeutter got less enthusiastic reviews as agriculture secretary before he moved on to the Republican National Committee, where he was widely regarded as ineffectual.

Yeutter, in a speech earlier to the RNC, defended himself against criticism that he had not been aggressive enough as a party spokesman or gained much national visibility.

He said Atwater’s death “caused some uncertainty within the RNC” and restoring the party organization’s stability took much of his time.

Bond is considered an expert in the detail work of politics, from building organizations to getting out the vote to fund raising.