The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Howard Baker went to work one morning last week with a Christmas necktie that was pink with large blue polka dots. Such extraordinary flamboyance for the White House chief of staff made even the President take notice. "I'll give it to you if you'll wear it," said Baker, an offer that Reagan tactfully declined.

The disagreements between those two usually have been on more momentous affairs during their year together. But as they head into the President's final months, Baker is more concerned that "our instincts are too much the same" than that Reagan sometimes goes against his advice. Abrasion is a part of creative politics.

History stalks the former Tennessee Senator, as astute a political philosopher as this city has seen. He watched the TV clip of Reagan saying, "The business that I used to be in said, 'Save something for the third act.' And we will." Once again, muses Baker, the President is right.

Baker has a new thought. "Presidents today cannot be lame ducks," he says. "This is a different era than the last days of Dwight Eisenhower. Events are so swift and interrelated. Reagan amplifies that necessary involvement because he is such an assertive person."

A year ago, Baker and the President worked out an understanding on objectives. Baker drew up a battle plan in Santa Barbara, which Reagan read and signed, one of those supersecret documents that archivists someday will exhume from the recesses of the presidential vaults. "In general, we pretty much did what we set out to do," says Baker.

Now his staff is producing a similar blueprint for 1988. There is even a small task force crafting Reagan's farewell address for a year hence.

Politics will taint everything this year. But Reagan should be at least an equal act in the grand finale, an act that could produce the INF treaty ratification, a Moscow summit, a new Supreme Court Justice, a ringing budget and free-trade debate and a firming attitude against terrorism.

Let the presidential aspirants hack away at one another. Reagan will stand aside for now. "In 1985, when I got out of the Senate," recalls Baker, "I came down to the White House to see the President and tell him I wanted to run for President. I asked him if he was going to try to pick his successor. He said, 'I do not intend to.' Then I had a second question. If he changed his mind, would he let me know? He said he would, and I have not heard a thing." Baker has warned his staff not to slight any Republican or give any an advantage. He has tried to keep the White House scrupulously neutral in the feuds between George Bush and Bob Dole, much to Bush's consternation. "I'll end up with all of them mad at me," he grins.

If the Reagan-Baker last-year plan succeeds, the President will go off into the history books looking remarkably like the man who came to Washington eight years earlier. To illustrate the point, Baker tells a story. "By Tuesday afternoon of the summit with Gorbachev, we were all worn out, and, to be honest, it had not gone all that well. Gorbachev was spewing facts all over the floor. The President was down. 'Howard,' he said, 'I had better hit the books tonight.' 'No,' I said, 'I wouldn't do that. Be Ronald Reagan. Remember who you are, what you believe and where you want to go. Let us take care of the facts.' Wednesday morning the President took charge and never let go."