Nation: A Team Player for the Pentagon

Whose adaptability makes him Reagan's man for all reasons

In a West Wing office of Richard Nixon's White House there was an audacious wall decoration: a large photograph of a broadly smiling Ronald Reagan, who had challenged Nixon for the 1968 G.O.P. nomination. Moreover, the occupant of the office, Nixon's director of the Office of Management and Budget, often proudly pointed to both Reagan's grin and the handwritten inscription under it: "The smile is for real, thanks to you. In friendship and warm regards, Ron." Said the OMB boss to one visitor: "Now, there is a man who really knows how to cut budgets."

That longstanding mutual admiration is a prime reason why the President-elect last week named Caspar Willard Weinberger, 63, to be Secretary of Defense. To some officials in Washington, "Cap the Knife" seemed an odd choice. The expenditure-cutting ax he wielded so zestfully first for Reagan in California and then for Nixon in Washington may gather some dust at the Pentagon, where Reagan plans a huge military buildup. Moreover, Weinberger's firsthand knowledge of weapons and military strategy apparently is confined to whatever he picked up poring over Defense Department budgets eight to ten years ago; his current views on those subjects will remain among Washington's best-kept secrets until his confirmation hearings begin next month.

Weinberger is a team player and loyalist who through long association has won Reagan's absolute trust. Those qualities are important in any President's Cabinet; in Reagan's they loom as vital. In addition, Weinberger will probably be the only Cabinet member who was part of Reagan's cabinet in California, where Reagan governed largely through an executive committee of senior officers, just as he intends to do in Washington.

Weinberger, in a Washington Post article two weeks ago, argued vehemently that the management technique would work in the White House. Past Administrations ran into difficulties, he wrote, largely because Presidents "in effect did not trust the people they appointed" to their Cabinets, and therefore relied on a large presidential staff to "keep the Cabinet in line." In contrast, he asserted, Reagan's Cabinet officers would be "advocates of the Administration's policies to their departments," rather than vice versa. According to Weinberger, the officers would give uninhibited advice to the President. But once a decision had been reached, they would carry it out "regardless of the blandishments of special interests or the threats of congressional committee staffs or the desire for individual prominence or the fun of being referred to as an 'independent maverick.' "

The Defense Secretary-designate might have been writing a description of himself. His long service to Reagan made it inevitable that he would wind up in the Cabinet, and he was considered for several jobs, including Treasury and State. He got Defense primarily because, said an adviser, "the President-elect has plenty of strategists. What he needs at Defense is someone who will run the place."