Ronald Reagan: Can He Recover?

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The appointment of Howard Baker could turn out to be an important first step. To be sure, Reagan took it well past the eleventh hour. He had been under pressure from old friends, Republican allies and his wife to fire Donald Regan as chief of staff ever since the Iran-contra affair broke. Still, Reagan clung to his abrasive, autocratic chief of staff until after the Tower report came out. By comparison with the unsparing criticism directed at almost everyone else, Regan actually got off rather lightly: the commission found no evidence that he had played any significant part in planning or carrying out the Iran initiative or covering it up afterward. But Regan was blamed for failing to make sure that an "orderly process" was followed in formulating that policy, and in particular for the "chaos that descended upon the White House" once the arms sales became public. Even then, he was virtually chased from office by the momentum of events; he quit only minutes before Baker's appointment.

The way in which Regan's successor was selected gives scant reason to believe that the President is about to change his ways. He made little effort to weigh Baker's strengths and weaknesses; once again he accepted passively the recommendation of some close advisers. But the choice itself was perhaps the best that could have been made. Reagan's close friend Paul Laxalt explained why he had strongly recommended Baker. The chief of staff, he said, should be "someone with credibility on Capitol Hill, credibility with the press, credibility with party people. More important, he should be a believer in the Reagan program and able to carry it out. I'm talking about a Washington political heavyweight." Most of that fits Baker, a patient coalition builder who acquired enough political heft during his 18 years in the Senate to have had a long-shot chance at the presidency. He was, in fact, briefly a rival of Reagan's for the 1980 nomination, and was preparing a run for the 1988 prize when he agreed to fold his campaign and serve the man he had hoped to succeed. (Some noted cheekily that, given Reagan's "management style," this was Baker's chance to be acting President for 23 months.)

As Senate majority leader during Reagan's first term, the diminutive Tennessean pushed Reagan's tax and spending cuts through the upper chamber with tact and skill, earning the respect even of the President's opponents. Though he is too moderate and conciliatory to please Reagan's hard-right fans for long, the choice of Baker drew wide initial praise. Democratic Senator James Sasser, Baker's onetime colleague from Tennessee, praised the new chief of staff's "pragmatism and reasonableness" and called the selection of Baker a "stroke of genius."

Baker has some drawbacks, though. He is not a particularly good manager and will need strong assistants to run the White House staff. Whether he can find them is questionable; he quit the 1980 campaign early partly because he could not put together a powerful team. On the other hand, he is well qualified to advise Reagan on how to cope with congressional investigations into a White House scandal. As a member of the Senate Watergate committee in 1973, Baker coined the question about Richard Nixon that came to dominate that probe: "What did the President know and when did he know it?"