Baker Named Chief of Staff at White House : Presidency: Bush's appointment was seen also as an effort to give experienced leadership to his reelection campaign.

By JAMES GERSTENZANG

Aug. 14, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

In a dramatic maneuver that underscores the depth of his political difficulties, President Bush named Secretary of State James A. Baker III as his chief of staff Thursday, shaking up the top of the nation’s diplomatic hierarchy and, for the second time in eight months, imposing a new team at the upper reaches of the White House.

Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a career diplomat, will be named acting secretary, a position that does not require Senate confirmation. Samuel K. Skinner, the former transportation secretary who replaced John H. Sununu as White House chief of staff last December, will become general chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Announcing that he had asked Baker to leave the State Department “to join me as chief of staff and senior counselor,” Bush said of his friend of 35 years: “He will help me build on what we started by developing an integrated second-term program of domestic, economic and foreign policy.”

But underlying that optimistic approach, said sources in the White House and the Bush reelection campaign organization, as well as other Republican sources, was a deepening concern that both the White House and the campaign office, struggling to overcome Bill Clinton’s lead in the presidential race, were desperately in need of firm, experienced leadership and new ideas.

One of his first tasks, a senior White House official said, will be to oversee the preparation of “new initiatives and to lay out ideas for a second term,” some of which may be presented as early as next week at the Republican National Convention in Houston.

Baker, said one senior Republican who has worked closely with him for more than a decade, will bring “focus, discipline and decision-making to a White House used to having decisions made, reversed and re-reversed. When Jim Baker makes a decision, it will stick.”

“For the White House and the campaign, there is one boss, and his name is Jim Baker,” the senior Republican said.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said campaign Chairman Robert M. Teeter will report to Baker, who four years ago abandoned his position as secretary of the Treasury to become chairman of Bush’s campaign just as it was turning a corner and overtaking the lead held by Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis.

His political record, however, is not flawless: He ran Gerald R. Ford’s unsuccessful election campaign in 1976, and Bush’s unsuccessful effort to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1980.

For Baker, 62, the move to the White House brings him full circle: He served in the same office in the southwest corner of the White House from 1981 to 1985, as Ronald Reagan’s first chief of staff, a position in which he was highly regarded for imposing discipline among the warring conservative factions that arrived in Washington with Reagan.

More recently, his control of foreign policy has been described by those in competing positions as the reason that differences between the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council staff have not blown up into public disputes, as they did in the Reagan Administration. And, by contrast, the lack of any such firm hand in the domestic arena has been blamed by some on the President’s failure to install any senior official with similar authority over economic and social policy.

There had been little doubt over the past month that Baker would be called upon to help revive the Bush campaign--and, although he said Thursday the decision to leave the State Department was “one of the most difficult of his life”--that he would respond. The only question was his title. In an interview with a group of reporters on Thursday, the President’s wife, Barbara, said Skinner and Baker had known about the shift for “weeks.”

The changes will take place on Aug. 23, one day before the scheduled resumption in Washington of the Middle East peace talks that Baker was instrumental in getting started.

The announcement that Baker would return to the White House brought expressions of delight from Republican partisans gathering in Houston for the party’s nominating convention, which begins Monday.

Clark Reed, the veteran chairman of the party in Mississippi, said Baker “can speak with authority for the President.”

Jack Kemp, the secretary of housing and urban development and a maverick whose espousal of conservative causes has often been a thorn in the political side of the White House, said Baker would “bring fresh new ideas and management skill and a decisiveness that I think personally was lacking in the campaign.”

“He’s a quarterback, and he’ll call the plays,” said Kemp, himself a former professional football quarterback in San Diego and Buffalo.

Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who with Kemp has pressed Bush publicly to adopt a new program of tax cuts to spur economic growth, referred to Baker’s past role as Treasury secretary, and said that his departure from the State Department signaled a shift of White House attention from foreign policy to the domestic matters around which the election is expected to revolve.

Democrats were less enthusiastic.

Clinton, offering a form of back-handed praise, said Baker was “one of the best politicians, deal makers and political handlers they’ve got.”

With Baker at the helm, he told reporters in Los Angeles, the Bush campaign “will still be very negative, but it will be more cleverly negative. They will know how to cover it up a little or paper it over.”

Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said the change was “a sign of extraordinary political panic.”

Ronald H. Brown, the Democratic Party chairman, said the assignment of Baker “to salvage a troubled and directionless campaign reveals just how desperate President Bush and the Republican Party really are.”

And Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Baker was “doing such an excellent job as secretary of state that I believe this move is a mistake and not in the national interest.”

But Bush allies were in unanimous agreement that the step was in the President’s interest.

“One of the main problems we had was we couldn’t get anyone to make a decision,” said a senior White House staff member.

The senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was recognized at the White House and campaign that the arrangement under which Skinner and Teeter played equal roles “was not working.”

He said that on Thursday, Bush summoned his senior staff--several of them closely tied to Skinner--to a meeting in the Roosevelt Room, across a corridor from the Oval Office, at 10 a.m., 15 minutes before he announced the shift himself in the White House press briefing room, and told them that Skinner was out and Baker was in.

“Jim Baker has been with me in every campaign I’ve been involved in for 35 years and I just want him with me in this one,” said Bush, reflecting on “our unique personal background together,” according to the senior aide.

When Bush finished his five- to 10-minute remarks, there was no applause, out of deference to those who were likely to be leaving, the official said.

Among those expected to leave with Skinner was one of the senior aides he brought into the White House, counselor Clayton K. Yeutter. A future role for deputy chief of staff Henson W. Moore was under consideration, the official said.

Baker will bring with him the core of his State Department team: spokeswoman Margaret D. Tutwiler; Robert Zoellick, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs; Dennis Ross, director of policy planning, and Janet G. Mullins, assistant secretary for legislative affairs.

Tutwiler will become assistant to the President for communications, Zoellick will be deputy chief of staff, Ross will be assistant to the President for policy planning and Mullins will be assistant to the President for political affairs.

At the Bush headquarters a few blocks from the White House, campaign manager Frederic V. Malek summoned the entire staff to report the shift.

Campaign officials have complained in recent weeks that after Republicans have won three consecutive presidential campaigns, they have lost the hunger for victory and that those at the top were running the campaign more as a hobby than with the fervor that has characterized the Clinton effort.

By 7 p.m. each night, they have complained, Teeter, Malek and the general campaign chairman, Robert A. Mosbacher, have quit their offices, and one official angrily tells the story of the day in July when June’s unemployment figures were being publicized, showing a sudden increase, and each of the three had already left Washington for the Independence Day weekend.

“There was no adult supervision,” one campaign aide said,

Times staff writers Robert Shogan in Houston, and John M. Broder and Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this story.