FEWER HOPES, COOLER HEADS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706120004-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: September 16, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706120004-5
A''T1"IEAPPEARED -1 16MSeptember 1985
ON PAGE _' cn 1-7 _
Nation
The Presidency/Hugh Sidey
Fewer Hopes, Cooler Heads
T he jelly-bean psychologist of the Reagan Administration, Commerce Secre-
tary Malcolm Baldrige, allows that his study of how his colleagues dip into
the President's jelly-bean jar during Cabinet meetings goes on as before, "but it is
not quite as much fun without Al Haig."
In the first days of the Reagan presidency, Baldrige became intrigued with
the various styles of jelly-bean consumption, particularly the aggressive search-
and-destroy method of then Secretary of State Haig. "He grasps the jar firmly
with both hands," noted Baldrige about Haig, "peers with great intensity into its
depths and searches until he finds two red jelly beans. These he pops into his
mouth, and there is an audible crunch as he masticates them into oblivion. The
man just doesn't like the color red."
Baldrige's wry eye records something important about Reagan's Govern-
ment at this critical moment. The
bright colors have faded. The sheer
joy of possessing power has lost
r some luster. The men and women in
C Reagan's Cabinet are, with the pos-
sible exceptions of Education Secre-
tary William Bennett and Attorney
General Edwin Meese, centrists de-
voted to preserving and enlarging
the beachhead won in the first term.
Their passion has cooled with expe-
rience, extreme ideology has given
way to accommodation. The contro-
versy that followed Haig, Watt and
Donovan has been replaced by the
solid sense of Shultz, Hodel and
Brock. If the Cabinet members are-
not flamboyant, they are competent.
If they are no longer revolutionary,
they are spurred on by the convic-
tion that they have made a differ-
ence that must now be preserved.
Baldrige himself, the cowboy-
industrialist who tells you with a
twinkle that he won 50 bucks roping
steers out West this summer, puffs
on a cigarette after breakfast and says that Ronald Reagan has changed the
thinking in the U.S. more than any other President since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
That crusade must continue. And another thing: Baldrige knows that being in the
thick of the deficit, trade and tax battles is more gratifying than anything else he
could be doing. Mature power has its own joys.
CIA Director Bill Casey, in pinstriped elegance and ensconced in his splendid
home off ashrn_aton's Foxhll Road- the very picture of a transplanted New
Yorker softl describes a world that is still dangerous and still unpredictable. B11
something happened in the t few years that has heartened him. Revolu-
tionaries or freedom are now getting more recruits than the totalitarians. Casey
has had something to do with that, and he relishes the thought.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who has endured more criticism
than any other Cabinet member, seems utterly unbowed. Gentle and gracious, he
pads around his huge Pentagon office complex, believing that the U.S. is just a
couple of years and a few billion dollars away from a defense structure that will
equal the Soviets' and create an environment in which diplomats can work for
peace free of worry about arms imbalances. His task: to stave off the forces that
now would dramatically cut defense spending.
Last week, after a session with Reagan, the Cabinet members burst out of
their meeting room and flooded down the hall into the. West Lobby, a tide of
dark blue and charcoal, the colors of their emergent political style. Like the man
they serve, they have picked up a few gray hairs and wrinkles and a lot of under-
standing about how tough it is to move people. Rancor among them is at a re-
markably low level. Hopes too have dropped. But as the Cabinet members broke
into small clusters, talking and gesturing, then rushing off in their big, brooding
limousines, there was the age-old sense of exhilaration that comes with power-
even at mid-life.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/02 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000706120004-5