Lost Leader

Howard Baker to step down

SAY IT AIN'T SO, HOWARD, wired Senator Robert Dole of Kansas to his Republican colleague from Tennessee, Majority Leader Howard Baker. Last week Baker refused either to confirm or to deny reports that he did not plan to run for re-election to the Senate in 1984. "I am in the process of trying to decide what my future will be," he said Saturday at the inaugural festivities for Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander.

In Washington it is not an everyday occurrence to see a man at the height of power consider relinquishing it. Pundits and politicians immediately assumed that Baker was beginning a run for the White House, if not in '84, then certainly in '88. But Baker's real reasons, like the man himself, may be more complicated.

Baker, 57, was elected to the Senate in 1966, after one unsuccessful campaign and a profitable career as a lawyer. His fairness and humor made him a national figure during the 1973 televised Watergate hearings. After a halfhearted try for the presidential nomination in 1980, Baker concluded, "You have to be unemployed to run for President," a remark that helped fuel speculation last week.

Admired and liked by Senators on both sides of the aisle, Baker has managed to be Reagan's man in the Senate without diminishing his own stature. Moreover, no one expects Baker's effectiveness as Senate mediator to be lessened if he becomes a lame duck. As his best friend in the Senate, Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) says, "There are people who need his patience, his ability to listen to all the guff, through all the tedium." But a Baker departure would affect his role as White House lieutenant. "The President's going to have to do his own selling," says a Republican Senator. "We'll be less inclined to put our careers on the line for the Gipper."

News of Baker's possible retirement sent a quiver through ambitious Republicans. Among those mentioned to succeed Baker as G.O.P. Senate leader in 1985: Dole, Lugar, Pete Domenici (New Mexico) and Senate Whip Ted Stevens (Alaska). In Tennessee the most likely contenders for Baker's Senate seat are Congressman Albert Gore Jr. and Governor Alexander.

Baker denied last week that he was trying to push President Reagan into a disclosure of his intentions for 1984. Said the Senator: "One thing I would make clear is that it does not in any way represent a challenge or a signal or a message to President Reagan." According to his aides, Baker's presidential plans are firmly dated 1988—unless, of course, President Reagan decides not to run for re-election in 1984. If that happens, other G.O.P. presidential aspirants, such as Vice President George Bush, Congressman Jack Kemp of New York and Senator Dole, wait in the wings. As one White House aide worried out loud, "I see an urgency in the President's making his intentions known. I think he needs to give a clear signal. Dole, Baker and Kemp right now aren't sure what's going on, but they aren't going to allow the year to drag on and give Bush the leg up."