A Team Player for the Pentagon

Whose adaptability makes him Reagan's man for all reasons

In a West Wing office of Richard Nixon's White House there was an audacious wall decoration: a large photograph of a broadly smiling Ronald Reagan, who had challenged Nixon for the 1968 G.O.P. nomination. Moreover, the occupant of the office, Nixon's director of the Office of Management and Budget, often proudly pointed to both Reagan's grin and the handwritten inscription under it: "The smile is for real, thanks to you. In friendship and warm regards, Ron." Said the OMB boss to one visitor: "Now, there is a man who really knows how to cut budgets."

That longstanding mutual admiration is a prime reason why the President-elect last week named Caspar Willard Weinberger, 63, to be Secretary of Defense. To some officials in Washington, "Cap the Knife" seemed an odd choice. The expenditure-cutting ax he wielded so zestfully first for Reagan in California and then for Nixon in Washington may gather some dust at the Pentagon, where Reagan plans a huge military buildup. Moreover, Weinberger's firsthand knowledge of weapons and military strategy apparently is confined to whatever he picked up poring over Defense Department budgets eight to ten years ago; his current views on those subjects will remain among Washington's best-kept secrets until his confirmation hearings begin next month.

Weinberger is a team player and loyalist who through long association has won Reagan's absolute trust. Those qualities are important in any President's Cabinet; in Reagan's they loom as vital. In addition, Weinberger will probably be the only Cabinet member who was part of Reagan's cabinet in California, where Reagan governed largely through an executive committee of senior officers, just as he intends to do in Washington.

Weinberger, in a Washington Post article two weeks ago, argued vehemently that the management technique would work in the White House. Past Administrations ran into difficulties, he wrote, largely because Presidents "in effect did not trust the people they appointed" to their Cabinets, and therefore relied on a large presidential staff to "keep the Cabinet in line." In contrast, he asserted, Reagan's Cabinet officers would be "advocates of the Administration's policies to their departments," rather than vice versa. According to Weinberger, the officers would give uninhibited advice to the President. But once a decision had been reached, they would carry it out "regardless of the blandishments of special interests or the threats of congressional committee staffs or the desire for individual prominence or the fun of being referred to as an 'independent maverick.' "

The Defense Secretary-designate might have been writing a description of himself. His long service to Reagan made it inevitable that he would wind up in the Cabinet, and he was considered for several jobs, including Treasury and State. He got Defense primarily because, said an adviser, "the President-elect has plenty of strategists. What he needs at Defense is someone who will run the place."

Weinberger, a San Francisco-born, Harvard-trained lawyer, started out in public life as a Rockefeller Republican, serving in the California legislature and as Republican state chairman. Once Reagan tapped him to become California's director of finance in 1968, he displayed an other side of his nature: what he has called a "puritan" insistence on balanced budgets and less government spending.

In his first job in Washington, as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, he carried out a reorganization that pointed the FTC toward serving consumer interests so effectively that he won praise from a man little disposed toward lauding bureaucrats, and especially not Republicans: Ralph Nader. Later, after moving from OMB to HEW Secretary, Weinberger sold Nixon, though not Congress, on a national health insurance plan.

But Weinberger left Washington with a rather Hooverish reputation: he regularly bewailed boosts in Government social spending, unsuccessfully urged Nixon to veto a bill increasing federal aid to the blind and disabled, and counseled spending reductions in all manner of programs, from school aid to medical research.

In both Sacramento and Washington, Weinberger loyally served his chiefs, accepting and ably defending spending programs much higher than he would have liked. He is remembered in Washington as a modest and unassuming man with a wide range of interests (he has been both a newspaper columnist and TV talk-show host in California) and something of an irreverent raconteur. He and his wife of 38 years, Jane, enjoy theater, opera and ballet; they have a son and a daughter. After leaving the Administration in 1975, Weinberger became a vice president and director of the Bechtel Group, an international construction and engineering firm based in San Francisco.

Weinberger's adaptability causes some Washingtonians to worry about how he will fare at the Pentagon.

Says one official who worked under him in the Nixon Administration: "Those generals and admirals will chew him up and spit him out in 15 minutes." That, however, is not the prevailing view; most old hands think Weinberger will make sure that the extra dollars Reagan intends to lavish on the military are spent on muscle rather than frills and fat. Says Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who as an assistant to Henry Kissinger was an Administration colleague of Weinberger's: "I'd expect him to be very jaundiced on Defense spending without limit, to bring an air of realism and reason to the Defense budget process." Whichever opinion is correct, there is no doubt which client Lawyer Weinberger will be serving to the best of his ability: Ronald Reagan.

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