George Bush: Mr. Consensus

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Moving quickly, Crowe and Cheney formed a small task force to study the ! force cuts in time for a May 19 visit to Kennebunkport, Me. That session was followed by a Monday-afternoon meeting in the Oval Office. There, Crowe told Bush the military could accept a 20% reduction in manpower and a 15% cut in aircraft without significantly weakening NATO's plans for fighting a European war. Baker argued that 25% would sound more dramatic. The President listened closely and asked a lot of questions. Finally, he settled on the lower, safer number. "O.K., I think we can go to 20%," he said. Turning to Cheney, he double-checked. "Now, is 20% all right? You can live with that?" Cheney nodded. "O.K., that's consensus," Bush said. "Let's go."

Bush generally feels more at home with foreign policy than with domestic issues. Little wonder: in serving as U.N. Ambassador, American envoy to China, CIA director and funeral-hopping Vice President, he amassed a detailed personal knowledge of world leaders. Like Nixon, Bush has a habit of adding intimate footnotes when intelligence briefers provide him with thumbnail biographies of figures making news overseas. "That guy isn't like that at all," he told an analyst who was profiling a foreign politician. "He goes back a long way with some of these cats," a senior official recounted. Two weeks ago, in a remarkable display of Rolodex diplomacy, Bush telephoned Kings Hussein of Jordan, Hassan of Morocco, Fahd of Saudi Arabia; Prime Ministers Turgut Ozal of Turkey and Margaret Thatcher of Britain; Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany; Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Chadli Bendjedid of Algeria; as well as the Pope -- anyone who might have a direct or indirect line to Iran or the Iranian-backed terrorists who were threatening to kill hostage Joseph Cicippio.

On domestic matters, however, Bush relies on a highly structured decision- making process that even has a name. Known to government-school types as multiple advocacy, it is designed to refine options and allow the President to hear his top advisers argue them out. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, Roger Porter, wrote a book extolling the virtues of the system after watching it work in the Ford Administration. Though multiple advocacy is time consuming and difficult to manage, Bush has peopled his Cabinet with the sort of collegial generalists necessary for success. The President apparently sees little irony in the fact that he campaigned against Michael Dukakis' "Harvard boutique" of advisers but now has erected a system staffed by his share of Kennedy School alumni: "I've known pretty well how I want to reach decisions -- get good, strong, experienced people, encourage them to express their views openly, encourage them not to hold back."

The recent clean-air proposal was a textbook case of multiple advocacy. With Bush's campaign promise to reduce acid rain and toxic waste as guidance, Porter assembled five Administration officials: Energy Secretary James Watkins, EPA Administrator William Reilly, Assistant EPA Administrator William Rosenberg, Associate Budget Director Robert Grady and White House Counsel Boyden Gray. They met 16 times during the spring, and on other occasions with lawmakers, industry officials and environmentalists. Gradually they fashioned a package they thought all parties could support.