Wexler Fills the Vacuum

In a sunny office on the second floor of the White House's West Wing, a myriad of complicated details were sorted out for this week's visit of China's Teng Hsiao-p'ing. There, too, strategy was being mapped for steering the President's budget through Congress, fighting inflation and rallying support for SALT. The office is a control tower for the Administration, and much of the credit for the improving management of Jimmy Carter's White House these days is being given to the tower's occupant: Anne Wexler, 48.

Acting as the Administration's traffic controller is exactly what Wexler was expected to do when she was brought into the White House nine months ago as the top-ranking woman and one of eight presidential assistants. With the Administration's popularity slipping and its programs bogged down in Congress, the relaxed Southern style of Carter's closest aides needed a strong dose of discipline and management. These were talents Wexler had demonstrated amply at the Commerce Department, where she had been a deputy under secretary, and in two decades as a political organizer. She worked up from local to statewide campaigns in her home state of Connecticut, and then earned a reputation as a skilled operator at the 1968 and 1972 Democratic National Conventions.

Explaining her role in the White House, Wexler says: "There was a vacuum between the policy formulation stage and congressional enactment. They needed to create a base of support outside the Administration."

Wexler's tactics seldom vary. First she pores through her bulging black notebooks that detail an issue's main features and its key advocates and critics. Then she invites interest groups to the White House to speak their minds. Later, potential supporters are asked back and told how they can aid the President on the issue. To help Carter's moribund energy bill, for example, Wexler last year met with at least 1,000 state officials and farm, urban, religious, business and. consumer leaders.

During the drafting of the 1980 budget, Wexler held dozens of meetings with hundreds of Americans who told her about their favorite programs and spending priorities. Generally, she made no promises, bluntly explaining that the deficit had to be kept down. But for some groups she did more. When big city mayors complained about federal cuts in urban aid, she arranged for them to meet Carter. After that session, the Administration boosted a key urban program by $150 million in the 1980 budget and asked that $200 million be added to this year's appropriation.

Wexler works what has become a typical schedule for top Carter aides. At her desk by 7:45 a.m., she rarely puts in less than a twelve-hour day. Saturday is spent at the office, planning for the following week. Says a White House aide: "The only person around here who is even better prepared for a meeting is Jimmy Carter." She also lunches regularly on Saturday with her second husband, Joseph Duffey, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are one of Washington's most powerful couples. Their combined federal salaries: $108,000. Each has two grown sons by previous marriages.

Ever ambitious (she wants a Cabinet post), Wexler has bruised some of her colleagues by a seemingly insatiable appetite for power. Says one Carter aide: "A number of people around here suddenly turned around and found that Anne had bitten off part of their job." Adds a White House staffer: "Anne is much better at her own p.r. than some of us."

More substantial criticisms are leveled by the Democratic Party's left wing, where Wexler is seen as betraying the principles for which she fought in the antiwar movement and when she backed such pure liberals as Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. She has also disappointed the feminist movement, especially by defending Carter's firing of Bella Abzug. Complains one of Wexler's former friends: "When she was appointed to the White House, we thought that she would be the one with the guts, independence and security to tell Carter where he was wrong. But we were wrong."

Wexler ignores the criticisms and stresses the importance of her new pragmatism. She defends her reborn economic conservatism by arguing that "if we don't get our fiscal house in order now, we'll never have the chance to achieve our social goals later." At the moment, she has little time to worry about her critics. She is too busy planning her campaign to win backing for the budget. Then comes the arms accord, a trade pact, the anti-inflation program and whatever else requires help from the second-floor control tower.

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