Mid-Term Scuttlebutt

Two months ago, the White House was its own dense pack: universal fratricide, and everyone an ICBM. Now, an internal truce prevails, induced by external threats. The President’s problems are gargantuan, and they have all come at the same time: budget deficits, unemployment, Social Security, defense spending, MX, the Middle East, NATO, and Andropov’s peace war. A let’s-get-the-wagons-into- a-circle unity prevails, with all hands at their stations, muskets at the ready. Talk about personnel changes has all but stopped.

Even James Baker’s turkey-blind interview with the Texas newspaper wherein the chief of staff let fly at Lyn Nofziger (“We cut him off at the knees”), at Reaganites (“Are there a bunch of them out there who’d love my scalp? Yeah. But they know they’re not going to get it”), and at Labor Secretary Ray Donovan (“He’s vindicated. Now he ought to do what’s right for the President”) appears to have done Baker no lasting harm, especially since he took the trouble to praise Ronald Reagan in the same interview. (“He’s so principled that you cannot make a political argument to him. You cannot say: ‘This will affect your chances to be re-elected.’ ”) Washington conservatives, as it happens, have their own interpretation of all of this: namely that Mr. Baker and his subalterns, plus a second member of the presidential troika, Mike Deaver, have fabricated this unity-at-the-White- House story as a rearguard action before they themselves walk the plank, a smoke-blowing exercise that the Washington Post publishes as true because it likes Baker’s soft-lining and upper-crustiness. Baker & Co. want to forestall what is already on track, say these folk, to wit, the early departure of Deaver, the reassignment of Baker, and the dismissal of Richard Darman and David Gergen, Baker lieutenants. Under this formula, Bill Clark would inherit the Baker job, and Ed Meese would continue as a kind of Issues Czar. Jim Baker has been offered Jeane Kirkpatrick’s position at the UN and rejected it, they say, but that rejection can be turned around. Jeane Kirkpatrick’s future is not mentioned in this schema, but presumably she would take over from Clark at the National Security Council, elbowing out Clark’s deputy and heir apparent, Bud McFarland, and the tainted (SEC problems) NSC staff consultant, Tom Read. On a probability scale, this comes in at about 3.5, where zero equals inconceivable and ten inevitable.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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Two months ago, the White House was its own dense pack: universal fratricide, and everyone an ICBM. Now, an internal truce prevails, induced by external threats. The President’s problems are gargantuan, and they have all come at the same time: budget deficits, unemployment, Social Security, defense spending, MX, the Middle East, NATO, and Andropov’s peace war. A let’s-get-the-wagons-into- a-circle unity prevails, with all hands at their stations, muskets at the ready. Talk about personnel changes has all but stopped.

Even James Baker’s turkey-blind interview with the Texas newspaper wherein the chief of staff let fly at Lyn Nofziger (“We cut him off at the knees”), at Reaganites (“Are there a bunch of them out there who’d love my scalp? Yeah. But they know they’re not going to get it”), and at Labor Secretary Ray Donovan (“He’s vindicated. Now he ought to do what’s right for the President”) appears to have done Baker no lasting harm, especially since he took the trouble to praise Ronald Reagan in the same interview. (“He’s so principled that you cannot make a political argument to him. You cannot say: ‘This will affect your chances to be re-elected.’ ”) Washington conservatives, as it happens, have their own interpretation of all of this: namely that Mr. Baker and his subalterns, plus a second member of the presidential troika, Mike Deaver, have fabricated this unity-at-the-White- House story as a rearguard action before they themselves walk the plank, a smoke-blowing exercise that the Washington Post publishes as true because it likes Baker’s soft-lining and upper-crustiness. Baker & Co. want to forestall what is already on track, say these folk, to wit, the early departure of Deaver, the reassignment of Baker, and the dismissal of Richard Darman and David Gergen, Baker lieutenants. Under this formula, Bill Clark would inherit the Baker job, and Ed Meese would continue as a kind of Issues Czar. Jim Baker has been offered Jeane Kirkpatrick’s position at the UN and rejected it, they say, but that rejection can be turned around. Jeane Kirkpatrick’s future is not mentioned in this schema, but presumably she would take over from Clark at the National Security Council, elbowing out Clark’s deputy and heir apparent, Bud McFarland, and the tainted (SEC problems) NSC staff consultant, Tom Read. On a probability scale, this comes in at about 3.5, where zero equals inconceivable and ten inevitable.