Business as Usual--Almost

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

A powerful troika takes charge, while Haig overdoes it--once more The first reactions were shock, horror, sickness at the thought that the nation had to go through it all once more. Then almost instantly came anxiety --not only for the wounded President but for the country itself. As citizens all over the U.S. and indeed around the world waited for the medical bulletins, questions formed: Did, and would, the U.S. still have a functioning Government? Could decisions still be made, necessary actions be taken, while a President in office little more than two months, barely enough time to get his hands on the levers of power, recovered from the attempt on his life?

Fortunately, the answer came before the worries had time to blossom. It was a resounding yes.

In the worst hours of uncertainty and confusion, while Ronald Reagan was unconscious in surgery, the nuclear button was right where it should be, in the hands of Vice President George Bush. On his flight back from Texas to Washington, Bush was accompanied by a military aide carrying the Vice President's version of the "football"--an unremarkable black leather case containing top-secret signal codes and military target information.

Reagan, once he shook off the effects of anesthesia, resumed some of his duties. The morning after the shooting, with a tube still in his nose and a needle dripping intravenous solution into his arm, the President signed a bill canceling an increase in dairy price supports that otherwise would have gone into effect the next day. The only sign of stress:

his signature was a trifle shakier than usual.

With Reagan's approval, Bush presided over two Cabinet meetings, carefully taking his accustomed seat and leaving the President's chair empty to symbolize the temporary nature of his enhanced authority. The Vice President also conferred with Netherlands Premier Andreas van Agt and Polish Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagiel-ski, who had come to Washington to see Reagan.

The Senate passed, 88 to 10, a budget resolution cutting spending for fiscal 1982 by $36.9 billion; that was roughly $2.8 billion more than Reagan had requested. At week's end Secretary of State Alexander Haig took off, on schedule, for a trip to the Middle East, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger left for defense consultations with Western European allies. Altogether, the week's official activity appeared to justify the phrase that Reagan's aides were using while the President was still in the recovery room: "Business as usual."

Well, almost. The day-to-day operations of the Government will continue about the way they would if the President were in the White House--as in fact he might be this week, if his recovery proceeds on course.

TIME Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey, who has been reporting on Washington for 24 years, notes that calm prevailed during Dwight Eisenhower's several hospitalizations, Richard Nixon's phlebitis, and even in the far graver crisis of the Kennedy assassination. Says Sidey: "We have sometimes overplayed the difficulty of running the Government.

National trauma we have had. But the postal clerk still comes to work, the soldiers still drill. If anything, they are a little more diligent in their duties, realizing that the country needs a special effort.

Men and women also tend to cooperate better at the higher levels in such moments. Heightened tension acts as a magnifier; every word, and sentence, becomes an apt of international significance and is rocketed around the globe where it is examined and weighed."

Even long-run policy formulation will not suffer badly during the next month or so while Reagan is convalescing. Reason: the Administration decided from the start to make the economic program of spending and tax cuts its top priority, and that program is well advanced. Says one White House aide: "There are peaks and valleys in decision making. If this had happened on Feb. 10, we would have been in a totally different situation. Now, for the time being, the economic decisions are already made."

Still, no nation as heavily dependent on presidential leadership as the U.S.

can shrug off the wounding of its Chief Executive as if nothing had happened. Already last week, some decisions were slipping: the Administration put off announcement of a package of measures designed to help the U.S. auto industry meet foreign competition.

Though aides publicly asserted that Reagan would confer late this month with Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo as scheduled, they conceded in private that the session might be called off.

Meanwhile, there are sure to be shifts in the balance of forces within the Administration, some with lasting consequences. Even in an Administration officially dedicated to Cabinet Government, the White House staff had been increasing its influence before the shots rang out.

The so-called troika at the top consists of Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, Chief of Staff James Baker and Deputy Chief Michael Deaver, Reagan's closest personal aide. Within half an hour of the shooting, the troika set up a kind of command post at the hospital, and once the President was recuperating funneled briefing papers to him (greatly condensed to avoid taxing his strength).

For at least the rest of Reagan's hospitalization and the early period of his convalescence, the troika's power will be greater than ever. They will decide who I sees the President, which decisions I are referred to him and which are I postponed or settled at lower lev-- els. They will also be the primary communicators of Reagan's words and wishes to the rest of the Government and the outside world.

The three, who breakfast together at 7:30 each morning, have worked out a smooth division of duties and interests that should enable them to maintain their influence when matters settle down.

Meese, who likes to lug home a bulging briefcase, concentrates on developing policy positions; Baker, who scorns paperwork, keeps a sharp eye on political affairs; Deaver is the devoted guardian and shaper of Reagan's schedule. Says one aide who has watched them closely: "No one can put himself in the President's shoes, when it comes to personal and many political considerations, the way Deaver can. No one can put himself in the President's mind, when it comes to difficult policy questions, the way Meese can.

And no one can understand the intersection of the White House and the bureaucracy, the bridge between intention and action, better than Baker."

Vice President Bush, too, seems sure to gain in clout because of the calm manner in which he filled in for the President at Cabinet meetings and ceremonial functions. His demeanor, neither pushy nor retiring, impressed even some Reaganites who had considered him a mushy moderate. Said one: "He has been impressive.

He has a good sensitivity to the situation."

In contrast, Secretary of State Haig damaged his already shaky standing in the Government. The echoes of his losing effort two weeks ago to have himself rather than Bush named as foreign policy crisis manager had not died down when he took the podium in the White House press room to proclaim, in a shaky voice, "I am in control here." Said one State Department official who is friendly with Haig: "I thought it was Seven Days in May. Al didn't do it right, and it's going to hurt him." At week's end a new controversy threatened to erupt when it was learned that Haig, without properly consulting other Cabinet members, had given the French tacit approval to sell 600,000 tons of wheat to the Soviets. The White House attempted to play down the incident in the hope that it would blow over, but talk continued to float around Washington that Haig might resign, and that the White House was already looking for a successor.

Those rumors were vehemently denied by the White House staff. Late in the week it made a concerted attempt to salvage Haig's credibility so that he could deal effectively with foreign governments.

White House aides insisted that Haig had only meant, quite properly, to reassure the world--and warn the Soviets --that the U.S. Government was continuing to operate. Said one White House staffer: "Al Haig is too strong a player to let go." Reagan himself summoned Haig to his hospital bed and gave the Secretary letters to hand carry to the leaders of Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Nonetheless, Haig left on his Middle East trip an uncertain figure, worried about having unnamed enemies in the White House who were out to get him. Whether he can recover authority over foreign policy is yet to be seen.

On the domestic front, the most obvious immediate effect of the assassination attempt, and the courage with which the President withstood it, was a powerful surge in Reagan's popularity. A quick Washington Post/ABC News poll the day after the shooting found 73% approving the way the President is handling his job, up eleven percentage points from just the week before.

Whether that tide of public sympathy and admiration will win additional votes for Reagan's spending and tax cuts, especially in the Democratic-controlled House where the real battle will be fought, is in some dispute. Most of Reagan's senior advisers agree with Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman, who says, "I don't think it will have any significant effect on the Hill." On the other hand, some Democrats are afraid they will be hampered in making an aggressive case against those cuts that they contend hurt the poor. Says one liberal: "You could never get anyone to go after him person ally, because he's a nice guy. But now it will be difficult even to voice anything against the program. That would be viscerally resented by a lot of people."

Nonetheless, the Democrats will try.

House Budget Committee Chairman James Jones will unveil this week a bud get proposal that would slash spending $4 billion more than the Administration's plan, but with a very different set of priorities. Jones and the Democratic leadership would cut $4 billion out of planned defense spending and $1.5 billion out of energy outlays, for example, while restoring $7 billion of cuts that Reagan wants in such programs as Medicaid, food stamps and child nutrition. On the tax side, the Democrats reject Reagan's threeyear, across-the-board slash in income tax rates in favor of a much narrower one-year reduction. The Administration's ability to counter this effort may be hampered by the enforced scrapping of Reagan's personal selling campaign for his program. The President had been sched uled to speak almost weekly to state legislatures to plug his economic package.

"Nobody can sell the program like he can," says one senior adviser. Another is concerned that "with Reagan in bed, we will lose a crucial month." White House aides, however, are exploring other methods of using the President's persuasive talents.

They say he will resume his highly effective personal lobbying on congressional leaders once he leaves the hospital, though he will receive them in the White House residence quarters rather than the Oval Office. They talk of putting him on television for a speech in which his natural mastery of the medium might be enhanced by the emotional impact of a recuperating President once again addressing the citizenry.

Meanwhile, the Government is carrying on sufficiently well that by week's end some Reagan aides were voicing an ironic worry: perhaps they have convinced the public too thoroughly that everything is business as usual. Says one:

"We spent two months trying to erase an impression that the U.S. had elected Ed Meese President, instead of Ronald Reagan. Now we are almost going back to the point of say ing that this Administration does not need him." Compared with the potential dangers of a leaderless Government, how ever, that is a minor worry indeed.

--By George J. Church.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Neil MacNeil/Washington

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Neil MacNeil

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