The First Dip Into Washington’s ‘Pretty Big Pond’

For me, the real inaugural on Wednesday came 90 minutes before the oath-taking when the big limousine carrying the Clintons slid past the northwest gate of the White House and rolled to the north portico, where the Bushes waited to greet them. This was the true changing of the guard. And it reminded me of a similar scene 12 years ago involving some starry-eyed Californians venturing into the unknown.

No amount of galas and concerts, briefings and bus trips, can emotionally prepare a President-elect and his top aides for that moment when they actually wheel up to the White House to take over. Later at the Capitol, there will be the swearing-in and the inaugural address. But for pure spontaneity between the anointed and the deposed, the rush of exhilaration for the new leader’s intimates, nothing tops that poignant exchange.

I had a close-up view of this pageantry 12 years ago when Ronald Reagan arrived with his entourage to seize the reins from Jimmy Carter. The sight of this civilized power transfer was the most moving of any I was to witness in nearly five years covering the Reagan White House.

Other fellow Californians I had known during Reagan’s gubernatorial regime also were about to occupy White House offices--among them Edwin Meese III as presidential counselor, Lyn Nofziger as political director, Edwin J. Gray as deputy policy director and, soon, William P. Clark as national security adviser.

But what made this occasion so personally intriguing for me, as I stood on the snow-covered lawn between the West Wing and the driveway, was watching one particular Californian I had known well for 24 years spring wide-eyed from the limousine motorcade.

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Michael K. Deaver had grown up in Bakersfield where, he recalled, his parents “had scrimped and studied price tags.” The son of an oil distributor, Deaver had “lower-middle class” roots. But he learned to play the piano--lounge music mostly--and in the late 1950s this paid his way through San Jose State College, where we lived across the hall from each other in a fraternity. Later our paths crossed again when Deaver came to Sacramento as an aide to the new Gov. Reagan.

Now at the age of 42, bespectacled and balding, the kid from Bakersfield stood in the White House driveway as one of the new “troika” of top presidential advisers, an equal partner with Meese and Chief of Staff James A. Baker III. In fact, Deaver was Reagan’s closest, most trusted aide.

“My heart was in my throat,” Deaver remembered when I called him Wednesday. “There was a lot of excitement and a great deal of apprehension about what I was getting into. This was a pretty big pond and treacherous waters. . . . I had taken a step into a minefield and I really didn’t know where it would end.”

Deaver was headed for a roller coaster ride that hasn’t ended yet. He was acclaimed as a genius of imagery and offered millions for his talents upon leaving the White House in 1985. But, he later wrote, “I was careless, stupid, inattentive to the enemies I made. . . . Overconfidence did me in.” Also alcoholism and arrogance. In 1987, Deaver was convicted of perjury for lying to Congress about his lobbying and sentenced to 1,500 hours community service plus a $100,000 fine. He lost his clients and virtually all his assets.

Today, having been sober for six years, Deaver lives with his family in Washington as executive vice president of Edelman Worldwide, a PR firm.

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But on Jan. 20, 1981, “It was just one huge high after another,” Deaver recalled.

“I remember Reagan and I walking across the lawn from the reviewing platform and his going into the Oval Office for the first time as President. He said, ‘You know, I think I’ve got to pinch myself.’ I said, ‘I know what you mean.’ He asked, ‘Where’s your office?’ I replied, ‘Gosh, I really don’t have one yet. Meese and Baker have been carving up the West Wing.’

“So he took me into this magnificent piece of real estate with a terrace that Nixon had built and a huge fireplace and he said, ‘Take this!’ I said, ‘This is the presidential study, I can’t take this.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Mike, I worked my tail off to get that round office. Why would I want this one?’ ”

I asked Deaver what advice he would offer this new group of Washington neophytes in the Clinton White House.

“I would find me as quickly as possible some old Washington hands I could talk to on a regular basis,” he said. “They’re going to give you wisdom very few people have and you’re going to need it.

“The other thing is to remember to be kind and to take time for the common courtesies, because you’re going to be leaving the White House someday.”