Who's in Charge There?

The guest of honor at the surprise birthday party last week tried gamely to make the affair fun for everyone. He grinned as his staff members carried in a gaily decorated white cake while singing a squeaky version of Happy Birthday. When he got some icing on his hands, he dutifully followed the directions called out by his wife: "Lick your fingers, Dick." He even got his Irish setter, King Timahoe, to lick off a glob of frosting that had polluted his maroon sports jacket. Pointing at the sullen skies outside, he joked to his aides: "Take the rest of the day off. Go out and enjoy the sun, the swimming."

But for all his efforts, the gritty good humor of President Nixon at his 61st birthday party was belied by his appearance. His complexion was pallid, and he looked haggard and weary. Clearly, the two weeks already spent in San Clemente had not, as hoped, begun to refresh his spirits or restore his vigor. The evidence of the President's weariness came as a particular jolt to some of his staffers: they literally had not seen him since his arrival.

The President has always preferred to work in seclusion, a fact that his defenders have used to try to separate him from Watergate. But in recent months, as the scandal has howled round the White House, Nixon has been isolating himself more and more. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew out to spend four days in San Clemente; despite their close association, he saw the President only twice. Roy Ash, director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, went out for one weekend to talk over the budget for the next fiscal year and never did get to see the boss. Indeed, Ash has met with the President only three times to discuss final decisions on the budget, which will chart the course of the Government. Only Energy Czar William Simon has been in frequent touch with Nixon lately (see cover story page 22). The White House staff will soon be weakened by the departure of the only two seasoned political aides that Nixon has. Melvin Laird will be leaving at the end of this month, and Bryce Harlow has said he will not be far behind. Both Laird and Harlow were persuaded to join the White House after H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Nixon's two top aides, resigned last April over Watergate. But for all their experience and prestige, Laird and Harlow found that they had relatively little influence with the President. A member of the House of Representatives for 16 years before becoming the President's first Secretary of Defense, Laird worked as Nixon's Kissinger-on-the-Hill to negotiate key issues with Congress. Harlow, himself an expert on congressional relations, was mainly occupied by the President's halfhearted and now defunct Operation Candor.

There are others who would like to leave too. Bill Timmons, 43, official liaison with Congress for the White House, has reluctantly agreed to stay on for another year; to quit now, he fears, would be interpreted as an act of disloyalty to his boss. Chief Speechwriter Ray Price, 43, has been thinking about leaving, but will stay on for the present.

Demanding Boss. The hope among White House staffers is that Vice President Gerald Ford will perform Laird's role as a top-level troubleshooter while also influencing domestic policy. But to accomplish this, Ford will have to become a commanding figure in his own right, something no Vice President in history has been able to do. Says one key White House assistant: "Let's wait six weeks and see how it works."

During the siege of Watergate, the man whom the President has relied upon to keep the demoralized White House staff running has been Alexander Haig. Kissinger, one of the most demanding of bosses, was so impressed with Haig's dedication and mind that he took him on as his deputy. When Haldeman left the White House, Haig, 49, resigned as a four-star general to become Nixon's chief of staff.

Although a demon worker, Haig does not crack the same whip that Haldeman did, and he does not have Haldeman's intimacy with Nixon. The President has come to rely most heavily for advice upon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, the man who lost his standing with newsmen by repeatedly "misspeaking" the facts about Watergate. Ziegler's rise has baffled most of Nixon's senior aides and horrified Senator Barry Goldwater, who told the Christian Science Monitor last month: "I just can't believe that he would listen to Ziegler. That in my opinion would be something disastrous. Nothing personal, but Ziegler doesn't understand politics."

Ziegler's background is in advertising; he worked for Haldeman at the J. Walter Thompson office in Los Angeles, where Disneyland was one of his accounts. Hired, trained and brought into the White House by Haldeman, Ziegler still consults his former boss on the President's problems. Ziegler is the one remaining adviser who goes back to the old days with Nixon: he worked on the losing 1962 gubernatorial campaign in California. The President, who values loyalty above all other qualities, obviously feels at ease with him.

Ziegler is not only Nixon's window on the world, he is the aide more responsible than anyone--Laird, Harlow or any of the lawyers--for shaping the President's Watergate policy. Ziegler is a hardliner, urging the President to keep his cooperation and disclosures to the barest minimum as he deals with his adversaries in the courts and Congress. The release last week of the President's incomplete and undocumented statements on the milk fund and ITT was planned by Ziegler.

In the months ahead, Ziegler is expected to continue as Nixon's top personal adviser. The question remains of who will do the long, slogging hours of leg-and brainwork to develop White House policy on the whole galaxy of domestic problems, from national health insurance to welfare reform. That job had been done by John Ehrlichman, who directed the Domestic Council. Under him, the council boasted a staff of 75 and played an important role in shaping Nixon's domestic programs during the first term. Now the council is down to 26 staffers, and its influence has declined proportionately.

The present director is Kenneth R. Cole Jr., 35, who this week is being promoted to Assistant to the President, the title that Ehrlichman once had. Although an earnest and competent aide, Cole has little of his predecessor's bulldog force of personality or, more important, his influence with the President.

Aides who have been studying the murky and shifting power game in the White House expect that Cole's territory will be infiltrated by Roy Ash and his Office of Management and Budget, which has a staff of 428 economists, lawyers and planners. Ash already has an office near the President's in the small West Wing of the White House; Cole is determined to get one.

Ash also has a valuable asset in Fred Malek, his deputy. A power in the White House on his own, Malek is an experienced, savvy and tough operator. For three years Malek was Haldeman's agent--some would say hatchet man --assigned to straightening out messy situations in the Executive departments. After the 1972 election, Malek helped to revamp the Nixon Administration, and now has the prime staff responsibility for pulling together the new budget. While conceding that the OMB is basically stronger than the Domestic Council, Malek says: "It's not in the President's interest to overrun them. We try to work with them as a team."

Little Contact. The outcome of any power struggle between Cole and Ash will depend upon who has most access to the Oval Office. And President Nixon has shown that he wants very little contact with his aides, except Haig and Ziegler. Working on the budget at San Clemente, Nixon asked Haig to put a call through to Ash one day. The discussion lasted for nearly an hour. Afterward, the Wall Street Journal asked Ash if he had actually talked to the President.

"Well," Ash replied, "he and Al [Haig] had just talked, and then Al had talked to me, Al talked to him, Al talked to me again. So Al was working with him on subject matter, and I was talking to Al ... In fact, I talked to Al, I guess, three times, interspersed between ... where he was talking to the President on the issues." Why had not the President simply talked to Ash directly? "Maybe it's less convenient to him than talking to Al," suggested Ash. "But certainly he was part of the discussion."

With the President governing by remote control, the strong men in the Administration are bound to have more freedom to act on their own: Kissinger, Simon, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and Treasury Secretary George Shultz, who has the top responsibility for the economy. Ironically, this diffusion of power is just what the President's critics wanted when they were protesting that a highly centralized White House staff was exerting too much influence in the affairs of the departments. But that was long ago, long before the eruption of Watergate changed everything for Richard Nixon.

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