The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

There were four of them last week from Capitol Hill gathered with Ronald Reagan in the morning brightness of the Oval Office. They were, in the distinctive patois of one participant, "trying to figure out how to keep the Democrats from wrapping a tire iron around our necks" during the budget struggle.

The old grandfather clock by the door set an easy rhythm, and Reagan's husky voice carried the tune, but Wyoming's Senator Alan Simpson noticed something else. Again and again, as the visitors identified obstreperous members of Congress and likely collision points, there came a soft and knowing chuckle from Chief of Staff Howard Baker. "Let me talk to him," Baker would say, or, "We can't let that one come to a head." He spoke in most cases with genuine regard for the adversaries, and he spoke always with a great relish for the game of politics.

Simpson, the Senate's Republican whip, does not hesitate these days to identify the distinguishing feature of Baker's two-month stewardship in the boiler room of the White House: "innate civility and kindness." That's an oddity after decades of worshiping brilliance, cunning and toughness. We have had the regimes of the ascetic and cerebral Ted Sorensen (under J.F.K.), the martinet Bob Haldeman (Nixon), the good ole country boy Ham Jordan (Carter) and the Wall Street sharpie Don Regan, who preceded Baker.

Howard Baker is unique in nothing so much as his gentle normalcy. At 5 ft. 6 in. and weighing "too much" (exact poundage is now a state secret), he has run through every diet conceived by man, from cottage cheese to rice, and been defeated by them all. But he struggles on good-naturedly in the White House mess. He wears button-down shirts that rumple spectacularly, and he is still followed by the old gag that somebody must wrinkle his suits before he dresses for work.

The thought of getting up at 5 a.m., as some predecessors tried to do, appalls him; instead, he climbs into his White House limo at about 7:40 and is at his desk by 8. Well, maybe just a few minutes after 8. And the idea of staying around until midnight is equally disgusting. He departs by 6:30 if the world is calm, and he does his best to keep it that way.

His encounters with the trappings of White House power have produced amused wonder. Spotting the multibuttoned flashing phone on his desk, he asked with his chuckle, "What is all this about?" There is no evidence he ever got an answer -- or cared. Baker keeps his office door open and occasionally calls out to folks padding down the halls. His desk is reckoned to be more clean than not, though it sometimes is hard to decide.

When Baker mutters, "This dog won't hunt," the old hands around him know that is the end of an idea. His other favorite phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is equally unspectacular but equally meaningful for the Baker crew. It means stop right there, we don't want any more needless work.

Visitors still sometimes treat Baker as if he held all the power in the White House, so almost every day he has to repeat, with a determined smile, "Ronald Reagan is President and I am not." When he travels with the President to the Hill or some equally fine-tuned political gathering, Baker makes a point when he can of standing across the room from Reagan. Yet he has been seen, under the wings of airplanes and in other impromptu settings, to tug at the President's elbow and extract him from a perilous encounter with reporters.

Baker has vowed to do something no other chief of staff in modern times has been able to pull off once immersed in the powerful White House potion. "I made a deal with myself," he told friends. "I'm going to be the same going out of here as I was coming in." If he manages that, he could give normalcy a good name.