Lost Leader

Howard Baker to step down

SAY IT AIN'T SO, HOWARD, wired Senator Robert Dole of Kansas to his Republican colleague from Tennessee, Majority Leader Howard Baker. Last week Baker refused either to confirm or to deny reports that he did not plan to run for re-election to the Senate in 1984. "I am in the process of trying to decide what my future will be," he said Saturday at the inaugural festivities for Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander.

In Washington it is not an everyday occurrence to see a man at the height of power consider relinquishing it. Pundits and politicians immediately assumed that Baker was beginning a run for the White House, if not in '84, then certainly in '88. But Baker's real reasons, like the man himself, may be more complicated.

Baker, 57, was elected to the Senate in 1966, after one unsuccessful campaign and a profitable career as a lawyer. His fairness and humor made him a national figure during the 1973 televised Watergate hearings. After a halfhearted try for the presidential nomination in 1980, Baker concluded, "You have to be unemployed to run for President," a remark that helped fuel speculation last week.

Admired and liked by Senators on both sides of the aisle, Baker has managed to be Reagan's man in the Senate without diminishing his own stature. Moreover, no one expects Baker's effectiveness as Senate mediator to be lessened if he becomes a lame duck. As his best friend in the Senate, Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) says, "There are people who need his patience, his ability to listen to all the guff, through all the tedium." But a Baker departure would affect his role as White House lieutenant. "The President's going to have to do his own selling," says a Republican Senator. "We'll be less inclined to put our careers on the line for the Gipper."

News of Baker's possible retirement sent a quiver through ambitious Republicans. Among those mentioned to succeed Baker as G.O.P. Senate leader in 1985: Dole, Lugar, Pete Domenici (New Mexico) and Senate Whip Ted Stevens (Alaska). In Tennessee the most likely contenders for Baker's Senate seat are Congressman Albert Gore Jr. and Governor Alexander.

Baker denied last week that he was trying to push President Reagan into a disclosure of his intentions for 1984. Said the Senator: "One thing I would make clear is that it does not in any way represent a challenge or a signal or a message to President Reagan." According to his aides, Baker's presidential plans are firmly dated 1988--unless, of course, President Reagan decides not to run for re-election in 1984. If that happens, other G.O.P. presidential aspirants, such as Vice President George Bush, Congressman Jack Kemp of New York and Senator Dole, wait in the wings. As one White House aide worried out loud, "I see an urgency in the President's making his intentions known. I think he needs to give a clear signal. Dole, Baker and Kemp right now aren't sure what's going on, but they aren't going to allow the year to drag on and give Bush the leg up."

Baker's uncertainty was not sudden, but was apparent as long ago as 1978. "Howard likes to wax nostalgic about the idea of the citizen-legislator," says Senator Lugar, referring to Baker's vision of responsible representatives in constant touch with the grass roots, who would do their duty and then step aside. Less romantically, Baker, a rich man when he came to the Senate, wants to replenish his personal coffers. His wife of 31 years, Joy, was successfully operated on last year for lung cancer. A pragmatic, contradictory, intensely private man, who once promised, "I'll be a political President, but I will try to ennoble politics," Baker may also have simply found the pressures of last December's lameduck session (which he strongly advised Reagan against) too much for a reasonable man to bear.

Whatever Baker's motives, he has focused attention on the Administration's vulnerability. There are omens like the Gallup polls that show Reagan as far less popular at mid-term than other recent Presidents. "Baker believes this is going to be a very tough year for the President and that he will lose his leadership edge," says a White House aide, who adds, "There's a real smell in this town that Reagan is not going to run." The President himself, despite the image of vultures circling the Oval Office, remains characteristically easygoing about the fuss. But in Washington, Baker's unexpected public musing about leaving the Senate has been taken as a signal that the jockeying for position in 1984 has already begun in the back rooms of the Republican Party. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.