A View Without Hills or Valleys

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Reagan's extreme reliance on his staff leaves him badly exposed when they muff their jobs. Last fall Administration officials quietly confirmed that then Middle East Envoy Robert McFarlane favored stepped-up U.S. military action in Lebanon. Clark, overreacting to the leak, drafted an Executive Order mandating polygraph exams to track down the source. The order could have subjected most of Reagan's top associates to lie-detector tests. At least one Cabinet resignation was threatened. "It was a black day around here," says a White House aide. Administration "pragmatists" intervened to get the foolish scheme canceled. Reagan was surprised by all the brouhaha: when he signed the sweeping order, he said, he had not realized that Secretary of State George Shultz, for instance, might be affected. "That order was not very complicated," says an aide with unusual bluntness. "Anybody could understand what it meant."

When his staff is divided, Reagan can be caught in a crossfire. Last October, as soon as Clark resigned to become Interior Secretary, Presidential Advisers Baker and Michael Deaver lobbied Reagan for promotions: Baker wanted to take over as National Security Adviser, Deaver to replace Baker as chief of staff. Reagan genially agreed, despite Baker's lack of foreign policy expertise and Deaver's administrative diffidence. A last-minute revolt by Administration right-wingers stopped the Baker appointment—and then only because he volunteered to withdraw, not because Reagan made a tough decision.

"When the staff chooses up sides," says a White House adviser, "that's when the weakness of the system of delegating power is apparent. That's when it doesn't work."

It does not work because Reagan lacks the temperament, and often the knowledge, to choose between the competing arguments.

There is a fine line between delegating authority and abdicating responsibility.

Reagan's staff applauds his aloofness from nuts-and-bolts details. "He is one of the best executives I've ever met," says Meese. Adds Baker with a swipe at Jimmy Carter's notorious overattention to minutiae: "You don't have to know who is playing on the White House tennis court to be a good President."

The power of Reagan's staff, of course, is enhanced by his loose management. But they seem sincerely protective of him. "Only one or two people around here," says a White House adviser, "are condescending about him. Everyone else treats him more like a national asset."

Reagan's acute intuitive sense, they say, makes up for the analytical flaws. "He focuses his attention on a critical few things," says one aide, who reckons that 80% of what Reagan does not know is unnecessary anyway. "He senses when something isn't working," says another.

Reagan has acquired a basic knowledge in some areas, particularly foreign affairs.

"He's matured substantially," says Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, chairman of Reagan's re-election committee. "In the early days, he'd cling to those note cards like a life preserver."