Making Reagan Be Reagan

By Robert Ajemlan

Mike Deaver is keeper of the presidential image

He is always there, distinct in the shadows of power, never very far from Ronald Reagan's side. But slender, balding Michael Deaver is a man who cares little about presidential policy and often slips out of secret White House briefings, bored. He worries far less about Soviet missiles and accusations of Administration sleaziness than he does about how those issues--and all others--threaten his boss. For Mike Deaver, at 46, has essentially one aim in life, and that is serving Ronald Reagan. For 18 years, after he stopped selling IBM supplies in Bakersfield, Calif, and got into politics, Deaver has been confidant, protector, image polisher and keeper of state and family secrets. Now he knows Ronald Reagan better than any other man alive.

In a presidency like this one, where the Chief Executive is so detached, so indifferent to detail, so psychologically unable to deal with personal conflict, Deaver fills a crucial need and thus wields enormous influence. He is Reagan's bridge to the rest of the world. Little comes out about the well-shielded President that does not first pass through the fine mesh of the Deaver filter. A master of symbolism and hoopla, he creates and cultivates the lasting images of the Reagan era. Strictly a behind-the-scenes operator, he is totally trusted by the President and Mrs. Reagan and can say anything he wants to either one of them. His power is so great, in fact, that colleagues often wish he would pay more attention to what they feel are matters of substance. Deaver, they are certain, could force bigger results.

His clout with the President springs from an uncanny ability to understand his man. His experience and intuition tell him with remarkable accuracy how Reagan will behave in any situation. When, at meetings, he spots Reagan's attention slumping or his impatience mounting, he quickly signals with a shake of his head for participants to quicken the discussion or drop it. Sometimes in a crisis he will rush the President a prepared statement only to discover that Reagan has already scribbled out sentences in almost the same words. At the root of the Deaver genius is the fact that he always pushes the President to stay his own best self. Says one close watcher: "He knows Reagan can't sell if he doesn't believe." And Deaver instinctively knows when Reagan reaches too far. In 1980 Reagan considered taking Gerald Ford on the ticket as Vice President. Deaver hated the idea because he thought it was entirely out of character. "It won't be your presidency," he objected. Reagan decided he really felt the same way.

By all accounts the President is by nature a passive man who needs to be set in motion by others. Deaver knows how and when to stir him, how to construct an agenda that Reagan then cheerfully pursues. Like no one except Nancy Reagan, he knows the President's inner feelings. He reads the President's diaries, which Reagan dictates into a tape recorder. Deaver's office, at the insistence of the President, adjoins the Oval Office. He is privy to the problems Reagan has with his children. At the end of a hard day last year, the President received a dressing down on the telephone from one of the children. Reagan put the phone down and said softly, "I didn't need to hear that right now." Deaver winced for his friend.

Reagan, a man who holds back virtually all his private feelings, needs the kind of emotional outlet Deaver provides. Says an old friend: "Reagan never unloads his problems on anybody. He just doesn't know how to open up." But with Deaver, outwardly calm and softspoken, the President allows himself to show real anger.

As he watches Reagan prepare for his national press conferences, Deaver can tell within minutes how well the President will do that night. Deaver always slips the President a handwritten message just before Reagan steps out the door to confront reporters. Sometimes the message teases him, sometimes it stresses a serious theme, always it seeks to break the tension for the performer. Deaver recently changed the format of the conferences, arranging for Reagan to stride down a long red carpet to the waiting reporters. Reagan seemed uncomfortable with the De Gaulle-like staging, but Deaver, ever the calculating imagemaker, persuaded him it looked more presidential.

Deaver's stamp of approval is on every presidential day. He controls Reagan's schedules, decides who comes in to see him. He puts together details of foreign trips, such as those to China and Ireland. Reagan, chafing playfully at the way Deaver manages his life, recently told a Senate group about a young boy in Europe who rushed forward and surprised him with an American flag. "That was one thing Mike Deaver didn't set up," Reagan said grinning. The President might have been less relaxed over Deaver's ill-considered comment in an interview last week about Reagan's having good reasons to nod off at Cabinet meetings.

Deaver's fussy imagemaking shows up everywhere. It was he, against strong opposition, who pushed for Katherine Davalos Ortega as the keynote speaker at this week's Dallas convention. He brushed aside suggestions that she was boring, seeing her instead as an answer to Geraldine Ferraro. Reagan sided with him. He balked at the showcasing of 1988 presidential hopefuls such as Howard Baker and Jack Kemp, and their roles were cut back. He initiated the convention films on the Reagans, including one on the First Lady. For that one, Deaver persuaded Reagan to be the narrator.

As close as Deaver's ties are to the President, they are even tighter with Nancy Reagan. The two are constantly on the phone, going over events of the day, measuring future dangers, sizing up the performance of Administration players, even the President himself. Reagan sometimes needles Deaver about the amount of time the two spend talking, referring to Nancy as "your phone pal." There is little action and intrigue around the White House that the pair does not know about. Says one longtime friend: "They're so alike in many ways, both suspicious by nature and judgmental." Sometimes they are appalled at how trusting Reagan can be of other people's motives.

The First Lady, zealous about her husband's fortunes, is an intimidating figure to many Administration insiders. But not to Deaver, who uses his partnership with her to push projects with the President. She places unlimited trust in Deaver and is candid about what is on her mind. He in turn works to protect her interests as much as he does the President's. Says one associate who knows both of them personally: "Nancy doesn't tell the President everything. But she's not afraid to tell Mike anything. They're like crossed fingers." Together they stand ready to fight and bleed for their man, the President. "If those two turn against you," says a close colleague, "you're dead around here."

Deaver's apparent blandness and wry manner make him an inconspicuous figure. But he is demanding, a worrier, and associates watch his moods carefully. He tends to play favorites. "He falls in and out of love with people," says one friend. Deaver professes surprise that no one challenges his judgments at the big scheduling meetings he conducts. But no one wants to cross him. A graduate of San Jose State, he is envious of the Ivy League polish of types like Chief of Staff James Baker, whose skills he admires enormously. He is captivated by the trappings of power, the limousines and helicopters. Like his boss, he does not put in a crushing day. He takes time for regular exercise and has a cultivated taste for fine food and wines. A couple of years ago, he collaborated on a book about diet and exercise, then put off publication after he was criticized for exploiting his White House connection. Not a reflective man, Deaver has an easy, self-deflating humor that invariably relaxes Reagan.

His views help determine how power is distributed across the Administration. It was Deaver, reinforced by Nancy Rea gan, who installed Baker as Chief of Staff. Later it was Deaver again, this time with Mrs. Reagan's delayed support, who worked on Reagan to get rid of Secretary of State Alexander Haig. It was also Deaver who had pushed for William Clark as National Security Adviser and then, realizing he had made a mistake, turned on him, once more with Nancy Reagan's approval. Today Clark will not speak to Deaver and acknowledges his greeting only when Reagan is present.

Two Cabinet officers Deaver has the good sense to tread lightly with are Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and CIA Director William Casey. Both have their own ties to Reagan. When Deaver once tried to talk Weinberger into going along with the President on budget cuts, the canny Defense chief knew just how to handle the pressure. Have the President tell me himself, Weinberger countered, sure that Reagan would avoid any blunt confrontation. Deaver dropped it.

Deaver's role often puts him over his head on matters of great substance. Nonetheless he somehow forces decisions to be made. When the Israeli bombing of Beirut dragged on ruinously in 1982, Deaver got Reagan alone. The attacks had become repugnant, he told the President with some passion. Children's limbs were being blown off, and Reagan was the only man on earth who could stop it. The President listened intently, telling Deaver that he too had been agonizing about it. Then Reagan summoned Secretary of State George Shultz and put in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. While Shultz and Deaver listened approvingly, Reagan demanded that the bombing be discontinued. Within 20 minutes Begin returned the call to say it had stopped.

Sometimes Deaver's influence turns up in unexpected ways. When he traveled to Japan in 1983 to lay out Reagan's Far

East trip, Deaver had two discussions alone with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. As they talked, Nakasone pulled out a photograph of his house in the mountains. Did Deaver think, the Prime Minister asked hesitantly, that the Reagans would visit him there? Deaver accepted immediately, adding gracefully that Nakasone's wife sounded very much like Nancy Reagan worrying about the Queen of England visiting the Reagan ranch. Then Nakasone turned more serious. He wanted Deaver to tell the President something important: He could not say it publicly now, but after the Japanese election, Nakasone would be ready to tackle head-on certain trade agreements with the U.S. Deaver brought the message back to Reagan.

This sort of personal message carrying is one of Deaver's key roles, and Reagan's less ideological counselors use him in this way constantly. If the President's mind is set, say White House moderates, and Mike Deaver is not with them against the hardliners, nothing will turn Reagan away from old and comfortably held views. With Deaver on their side, they at least have a chance.

Yet for all his personal influence, Deaver chooses to behave more like a steward of the presidential image than a shaper of public policy. He is the master of the household, the Lord High Chamberlain of the White House.

Any hardness he may have acquired in his many years as a watchdog vanishes when the old trouper gives a vintage performance. Sometimes Deaver, standing in the back of an auditorium, listening one more time to the President using, say, a heroic Scottish ballad to make his pitch, finds his eyes growing moist with a familiar emotion. It is love, of course, a kind of deep filial devotion, and he is filled with it for Ronald Reagan. --By Robert Ajemlan