The "De Facto President"

By Barrett Seaman

As Administration aides scrambled last week to deflect blame for the Iranian arms fiasco away from themselves, a good number of fingers were pointed directly at Ronald Reagan's increasingly visible and often imperious chief of staff. More than ever Donald Regan, 67, seems to be out front these days, projecting an aura that at times makes him seem both commanding and condescending. With a self-confidence burnished by nine years as the chief of Merrill Lynch, he has set up a hierarchical structure that puts him alone atop the upward flow of information. Combined with Reagan's inclination to rely on his staff to sort out options, Regan's management style has earned him a reputation as the most powerful presidential adviser since Sherman Adams ran the White House under Dwight Eisenhower.

This makes Regan a lightning rod for criticism of the Administration when problems erupt. Resting his case on Iran, the Daniloff deal and Reagan's murky conduct at the Iceland summit, conservative Columnist George Will wrote last week: "The aides in close contact with President Reagan today are the least distinguished such group to serve any President in the postwar period." Regan dismisses such sweeping criticisms. But he does bristle at unfavorable comparisons between his White House (and he often sounds as if he believes it is "his" White House) and that managed by his predecessor, James Baker. Regan firmly believes that the pyramid of command he has established is more efficient and less susceptible to discord than the often uneasy troika that Baker formed with Edwin Meese and Michael Deaver.

Regan, never self-effacing, spouts his mind with a mixture of candor and clumsiness. He seems convinced that it is his penchant for essaying pointed jokes, nothing more, that gets him in trouble. He even says that his blast at Robert McFarlane last week for giving "lousy advice" was meant as a "throwaway line." Says he: "I'm going to have to stop being witty."

Almost all the White House problems lately are in the foreign policy field, where Regan has little expertise and claims the least influence. Although he helped hasten McFarlane's departure by trying to make the National Security Adviser more accountable to him, Regan stresses that the post is independent of the chief of staff. "I don't have foreign policy under me," Regan protests. Such claims hardly ring true to most in Washington. Says one first-term Reagan staff alumnus: "It's clear that Regan's calling the shots. He's the de facto National Security Adviser, the de facto legislative strategist . . . the de facto President."

Regan insists that necessity, not overreaching, forced him to become a spokesman on foreign policy, which gives the impression that he is running the show. "In foreign policy there are very few voices. It's no secret that John Poindexter didn't like to go on camera or speak on the record . . . This is where it becomes apparent to those on the outside that I'm up to my elbows in foreign policy, because I become one of the few who know the full story."

Indeed, that is part of the deeper problem. Because he has limited the number of people who know the full story, and because there are now "very few voices" offering advice, Regan's system lacks the checks and balances that might come from a less efficient operation. And Regan should know from his days on Wall Street that the only real measure of management style is the bottom line.