Potomac Transition Fever

By Hugh Sidey

Every morning now, when first light penetrates the Potomac River Valley, consultants, think tankers, reporters, lobbyists, legislative aides and itinerant professors hurry from television screens to newspapers, to car radios, to telephones, and finally to their In boxes, rummaging for new data on the Reagan transition that can be analyzed, codified and charted.

Washington is a city with a mind shaped like a box score. It is a place where legions exist to prove that what Presidents have done is wrong and what they want to do cannot be done, or will not work if it is done. This kind of assessment is a high-tension endeavor, employing perhaps a quarter of a million people, and never more at fever pitch than during a presidential transition.

Every action, gesture and word by a President-elect and his staff becomes symbolic of something larger expected later. Every contact, every appointee is a declaration of policy that may rock the world. Nothing is too trivial, remote or obscure. Already the quivering hordes of analysts have perceived the Rea gan global strategist (Alexander Haig), most powerful legislative ally (Paul Laxalt), shadow behind the power (Richard Nixon), new fashion color (brown).

Administration theologist (George Will), classiest caterer (Finesse), top decorator (Ted Graber), happiest hobby (chopping wood), most dashing dress designer (Adolfo), most celebrated friend (Frank Sinatra) and the assistant President (Ed Meese).

Yet, there is in the analysis industry a great frustration. On certain days around Washington, there is very little to analyze. What may be worse, the Reagans will not heed the studies, charts and diagrams of how to conduct a transition. Reagan has just met for the first time some of the people he named to his Cabinet. Those who believe that a President-elect should eat, talk and pray with his Cabinet nominees were stunned.

Learned articles were written about the hazards of splitting White House authority between Ed Meese and Jim Baker. The idea of a super-Cabinet committee, of collegial decision making, drew somber sighs from Harvard to Georgetown. Editorial pages choked with warnings about the confusion, cost and delays in the transition.

But an odd thing occurred. Not many people seemed to be listening or to care. Chief of Staff Jim Baker went cheerfully about the business of planning his office, confident that the personal relationships of the staff would in the end confound the chartmakers. Reagan was back on his ranch chopping more wood, which further flummoxed journalists who were in California to write about the President-elect preparing to shoulder the burdens of the world. They wrote interminably of the fact that there was nothing to write about.

There have been mornings when the good liberal pages of the Washington Post seemed to drip tears in melancholy memory of the old days of lists and rosters and diagrams. "How much time did you spend with Governor Reagan in discussing this position?" an incredulous Democrat, Senator Dale Bumpers, asked Interior Nominee James Watt, who answered. "About 15 to 20 minutes." Reporters nearly dropped their tape recorders.

Complaints about the cost of the Inaugural, the formal wear, Reagan's refusal to be drawn into policy discussions, all seemed to slide off the President elect. Nancy did not even travel to the capital on the third visit, and Reagan arrived with his same familiar speeches -- and his same enduring good-guyness.

There is not a person alive -- including Ronald Reagan -- who knows if his unorthodox approach is going to work. If it does not, he will become Harvard's laboratory example of failure for generations of political science students. If it does work, Ronald Reagan will be hailed as America's latest political genius.

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