White House boss rides out storm

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 40

White House boss rides out storm

By MICHAEL PUTZEL Associated Press, through NZPA Washington

If Donald Regan is still White House chief-of-staff after the first of the year he will have beaten the odds in this politically savvy city where the smart money rides only on winners.

President Reagan’s tough-talking White House boss is not taking hints from the bookmakers and appears determined to ride out the storm over his stewardship during the gravest political crisis of Reagan’s presidency. Regan is in what many observers consider a nowin situation.

If he didn’t know about the skimming of Iranian arms payments for Nicaraguan rebels, they say, he failed to keep tabs on the staff he has ruled for Reagan the last two years, and therefore ought to get out.

The converse of that is that if it is determined he did know then he has lied and must be dismissed. Regan’s response has been to drop out of sight.

At recent public events, when he normally would be at Reagan’s side, the chief-of-staff has stayed out of range of the evervigilant cameras. He was conspicuously absent from the Reagans’ private Christmas ball for members of Congress on Tuesday evening.

“He’s disappeared from sight because he’s working on the budget,” explained the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes. Asked why Regan didn’t attend the ball, where he might have tried to repair his damaged congressional relations, the spokesman said the Regans “do not do that much social activity in Washington”.

Several influential congressional leaders have suggested Reagan should find a new chief-of-staff to help him get through the difficult period of investigations ahead. The President has given no indication he has lost confidence in Regan, who in his present position has grown closer to Reagan than anyone in the Presi-

dent’s official circle.

Regan loyalists, speaking privately, say the pressure for his resignation seems to have subsided this week and they predict he will survive.

There is, however, considerable self interest in their assessment because practically everyone on the White House staff in a position to know Regan’s intentions owes his or her job to him and would likely follow him out the door.

One usually well informed Reagan associate, in explaining the thinking of those who believe Regan should leave said: “He’s offended half the Congress, most of the press and just about everyone else in this town who doesn’t work for him.”

That sentiment, echoed in many quarters, may be an exaggeration, but the brash, blunt-spoken former Wall Street executive has often been accused of insensitivity to the interests of Reagan loyalists in Congress. His practice of playing favourites with a handful

of reporters has left a bitter taste in the mouths of those he has excluded from his office for months.

In a town that practises politics full-time, Don Regan has won no popularity contests.

Regan supporters say part of his job is to take the heat for the President, that an unelected chief-of-staff is easier' to attack than a popular chief executive and that controversy, as one put it “goes with the carpet in the corner office” down the hall from Reagan’s.

Conventional wisdom holds that Regan has a constituency of two: the President and ’ Nancy Reagan, who is widely regarded as having sway over her husband’s personnel choices.

Mrs Reagan has said publicly she is making no recommendation, but that has not staunched reports that the First Lady is consulting old friends with political savvy, including a long-time Reagan aide, Michael Deaver, about whether Reagan should bring in a new staff chief.