The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

With a little champagne in the Rose Garden and a good deal of sentiment from Ronald Reagan, the White House troika marched into the history books last week to become another chapter in the arcane world of staffing and running the presidency. Meese, Baker, Deaver, sounding -- and often acting -- like an infield in the American League, now will be part of the lore that includes Nicolay and Hay, who served Lincoln, Colonel House, who advised Wilson, Kennedy's Irish Mafia and the infamous Berlin Wall, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon's unfortunate duo who ended up in jail.

For four years Jim Baker, Mike Deaver and Ed Meese were the powers within the power, and they were about as good as you can be at that strange business. There have been stories, of course, about occasional stress backstage, and there may be some new revelations as the books and reminiscences roll out. But it will be hard to dim the luster of these four years, a remarkably long time for three ambitious aides to hang together and successfully support a President.

The Rose Garden affair was a private salute to Deaver, who went off into his own public relations business, the last of the three to find new work. Baker, the Secretary of the Treasury, ribbed him about being an expert "leak" and brought appreciative snorts by invoking the standard White House parry to outsiders: "And remember, Mike, don't call us, we'll call you." Deaver, in reply, pronounced Baker's words "the best speech" that Margaret Tutwiler, Baker's assistant, ever wrote.

The President promised not to raise "golf balls" in anybody's throat, but did. Nancy cast her eyes down. Meese, the new Attorney General, beamed at everybody. White House switchboard operators, advancemen and journalists, all acknowledging some admiration of the troika era, nibbled shrimps and watched the shadows along the White House lengthen and history move on.

How did the troika do it? The experts, including one of the world's pre- eminent power arbiters, Henry Kissinger, predicted that such a division of authority around the President might not work. It did, and now many of the same people are predicting that power will be too centralized under the new chief, Don Regan. Washington is slow to learn.

It is simply not possible to define or chart what those three men did for Reagan or how they did it. "It's a people business," explains Baker, adding as much mystery as he dispels. If he ever writes a book about what went on in those four years, it will be more of a psychology text than a manual on technique.

"It was the loyalty to the President that made the thing go," says Meese, a thought that all three endorse. They loved the man, to put it in its purest terms. They would do almost anything to help him, and almost anything to avoid embarrassing him. Reagan did not want strife in this staff, so the troika worked about as hard at getting along with one another as they did on anything.

The President's assignments had Meese running day-to-day operations with the rest of the Government, Deaver managing the President's personality and Baker dealing with the press and legislation. The true work was much more subtle. Baker softened the ideological edges and was father confessor to the outside world. Meese was the conservative theologian in the chapel, reassuring his flock that he was whispering the true gospel in Reagan's ear. The ubiquitous Deaver negotiated and held the peace between Baker and Meese.

Do any of the troika worry about their successor? Not so far. One of the lessons they all carry away from the White House is that the presidency can work in different ways as long as the people at the center believe they are doing something that is more important than themselves.