No Miracles Yet

Most Republicans breathed a sigh of relief when former Secretary of State James Baker took over the White House in August. Baker and his team, it was said, could make quick decisions. They could stop the leaks. Baker could talk straight to the stubborn President. As the engineer of Bush's 1988 win, Baker seemed just the political wizard that the President's often incoherent re- election campaign needed.

With seven weeks left before the election, it is clear that neither Baker nor his boss is working miracles -- yet. Baker does deserve credit for making Bush focus on his biggest weakness and the voters' overriding concern: the Administration's handling of the economy. In an appearance before the Economic Club of Detroit, Bush offered his clearest prescriptions so far. True, the Baker plan provided little new substance. But viewed as a campaign document rather than as a bold new policy manifesto, Baker's speech at least repositioned Bush as a man with a plan.

The first task Baker and his aides faced when they arrived at the White House was to impose order on a chaotic political operation. Decision making had ceased. Top-level meetings took hours and accomplished nothing. Second guessing and finger pointing were rampant. Advance men were refusing to journey to sites of future Bush events out of fear that they would be canceled en route. Bush had little confidence in his top advisers, and the strain was evident to anyone who watched him on television. Baker has told friends that before returning to the White House, he had discounted complaints about how sclerotic the operation had become. Once he got there, he confessed that he'd "had no idea how goddam bad it was."

As lting the things to do before they go home that night.

Each morning and night, Baker and his team meet with five other officials: Budget Director Richard Darman, campaign chairman Robert Teeter and manager Fred Malek, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. Baker makes most of the decisions on scheduling, speeches and lines of attack; he demands same-day execution from his nine aides. "Once decisions get made," says Malek, "they stay made."

The most dramatic effect Baker has had so far is on the mood and performance of the President. Just knowing that his old friend is at his side, thinking through his every move, has put some badly needed spring back into Bush's step. All of Bush's speeches are now clearer, better written, more substantive and, most important, consistent. "For the first time in months," said a senior campaign official, "we are able to stay on our message for more than 12 hours."

Baker's team has already taken credit for toning down the party's overheated family-values rhetoric following the Republican Convention. After watching conservative speakers bash gays and Hillary Clinton in Houston, the Bakerites immediately sensed that the theme was, as an aide put it, "exclusionary, rather than inclusionary." Within hours of taking over at the White House, Baker team members requested poll data to back up their hunch. When they got them, they moved to more closely tie Bush's talk of family values to his policies. "There was just a consensus," said an official, "that we were eventually going to hurt ourselves if we weren't careful about how we handle it."