HOW DONALD REGAN RUNS THE WHITE HOUSE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260015-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: January 6, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260015-6
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ARTICLE AP? ED
QN PAGE
By Bernard Weinraub
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
6 January 1986
How
DONALD REGAN RUNS
THE WHITE HOUSE
IT IS 7:15 A.M., AND THE CHAUFFEUR-
driven blue limousine moves through the rain into
the west basement of the White House. Donald T.
Regan opens the door and walks up a narrow flight
of steps into his office where aides, in shirt sleeves,
await him. His mood is bleak. En route from his
sprawling riverfront home in Mt. Vernon, Va., the
White House chief of staff has read the morning
newspapers. His eyes had widened over an article
containing leaked information about proposed cuts
in domestic spending that the White House had
planned to announce in February.
Although Regan has been informed by legislative
aides that prospects for the President's major do-
mestic initiative - tax revision - are hopeful and
that it seems likely to pass by early summer,
Regan is plainly angry. The four aides shuffle out
after a brief conversation and, as he does every
morning, Regan sits alone at his Government-issue
ma;:ogany desk to read overnight cables from
abroad over a breakfast tray of cereal, blueberry
muffins and coffee.
Promptly at 8 A.M., Regan walks out of the office
for his daily meeting in the Roosevelt Room, where
more than a dozen White House senior staff mem-
bers are seated at a rectangular table, white pads
and pens before them. "I'd say 'good morning,' but
that's just a phrase," he says. Quickly, he raises
the issue of the leaked figures. "Anybody who
wants to leak confidential information can resign,"
he says coldly. "If any of you think you know better
than the President about what ought to be com-
municated you don't belong here."
In the nervous silence, Donald Regan proceeds to
review the President's schedule for that day.
"What upsets me is inefficiency, stupidity and
unexpectedness," he says later. "If someone knows
of a problem and conceals it from me, I get more
upset from that than from the problem itself. I tell
our people time and time again: Bad news first.
Never a surprise. Please! Particularly an unpleas-
ant surprise."
One year after his appointment as White House
chief of staff - a year of unpleasant surprises as
well as some key triumphs - Don Regan has
Bernard Weinraub covers the White House for The
New York Times.
emerged not only as the most dominant figure in
the Administration after the President, but, per-
haps, the most powerful chief of staff since Sher-
man Adams in the Eisenhower era.
Regan's predecessor, James A. Baker 3d, now
Treasury Secretary, shared an unwieldy troika ar-
rangement with Edwin L. Meese 3d, now Attorney
General, and Michael K. Deaver, who heads a pub-
lic-relations firm. Regan, in contrast, has firmly
established personal control over White House
operations. In the process, he has emerged as a
highly visible and controversial figure with lever-
age over every aspect of domestic policy and, with
the recent departure of the national security ad-
viser Robert C. McFarlane, foreign policy.
"Regan may even be more powerful than
Adams," said Fred I. Greenstein, professor of poli-
tics at Princeton and a Presidential scholar.
"Adams had nothing to do with foreign policy.
Regan certainly does. And before Eisenhower -
under Truman and F.D.R. and Hoover - there was
no single chief of staff."
Under the system Regan has constructed, the
President's speeches, schedule, paper work and, to
some degree, priorities, are now in the singular
control of Regan himself. A former Marine from
Boston, Regan revels in the fact that he has risen to
the pinnacle of success - first on Wall Street and
now in Washington - through aggressive gambles,
bold ambition and, perhaps most significant, the
fact that his critics have consistently underesti-
mated his bureaucratic shrewdness, even cunning.
"People haven't made the effort to find the kind
of person I am," he says. "They take surface
things, they like to put people in boxes. Yes, I am
competitive, I have a reasonable intelligence and I
don't mind studying something, working on it, in
order to understand the system and then seeing
what I could do to better it. That's why Wall Street
never could understand me. People would rather
swim with the tide, not against it. Not me."
It is perhaps too early to gauge what effect Regan
and the changed White House staff structure will
have on the conduct of the nation's business. Critics
say Regan's relative inexperience and his brusque,
commanding style have irritated key legislators,
and have damaged White House relations with Con-
gress. Regan acknowledges the criticism, but he
points to the President's extraordinarily high poll
ratings as a testimony to the skills of Ronald Rea-
gan and of the people around him.
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260015-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260015-6
4i i
EVEN BEFORE THE DEPAR-
ture of McFarlane, Regan had
personally reshaped much of
the White House staff, filling key posi-
tions with officials who are well-quali-
fied, but who are beholden to him and
pose no threat to his power. It is one of
Regan's management techniques -
learned in his years at Merrill Lynch
- to appoint able, second-level people
in top-level jobs, thereby avoiding the
creation of any new centers of bu-
reaucratic power.
With President Reagan's endorse-
ment, Regan sought the appoint-
ments, among others, of James C.
Miller 3d to replace David Stockman
as director of the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget; Dr. Otis R. Bowen
as head of the Department of Health
and Human Services; Patrick J. Bu-
chanan as director of communica-
tions; Beryl Sprinkel to serve as
chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers; Bill Brock as Secretary of
Labor, and Linda Chavez to head the
White House office of public liaison.
Only a few holdovers from the James
Baker years remain, among them
M. B. Oglesby, head of legislative
affairs.
Regan counts Secretary of State
George P. Shultz and William J.
Casey, Director of Central Intelli-
gence, among his closest friends in
Washington. Aides say that Regan
and Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger speak frequently
on the telephone and, despite
some friction over defense
needs and spending, maintain
a good relationship.
Regan's personal staff, said
one White House aide, is "al-
most obsequious and "scared
stiff of him." "He's bright
and aggressive and funny and
he has an edge of anger - an
anger that seems waiting to
go off," said a White House
official. When Regan turns
angry, another official said,
"He has a look that would
stop a locomotive in its
tracks." Regan aides - as
well as Wall Street colleagues
- insist, however, that
Regan welcomes internal de-
bate, and only expresses his
temper when an official is
poorly prepared.
One official remarked:
"The staff seemed to spend
an inordinate amount of time
deciding who goes to what
meetings - that kind of silli-
ness." Regan is aware of the
criticisms. He has increas-
ingly sought advice on staff-
ing problems from such dis-
parate Reagan loyalists as
Senator Paul Laxalt, Repub-
lican of Nevada, and Kenneth
Duberstein, who skillfully ran
the White House legislative
office in the first term.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807260015-6