Eclipse of a Deputy

Meese slips from the center of power

One of Ronald Reagan's top advisers, Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, was conspicuously absent from the tight-knit trio of aides that met two weeks ago to determine Alexander Haig's fate. While White House Chief of Staff James Baker, Deputy Chief Michael Deaver and National Security Adviser William Clark discussed the Secretary of State's resignation with Reagan, Meese was kept in the dark. Indeed, the man once regarded as the "deputy President" did not learn of Haig's departure until he returned to

Washington from a speaking engagement, an hour after Reagan had made the resignation public. The incident was but one measure of how far Meese has slipped from the center of power.

The decline of Reagan's longtime aide stems from several ill-considered decisions, an inefficient management style and a travel schedule that has kept him away from the White House at key moments. Although he is generally known as Reagan's policy czar, one informed presidential aide told TIME Correspondent Douglas Brew: "I cannot think of a major policy program that he has shaped."

The clearest sign that the Counsellor's White House role was shrinking came with the resignation of Clark's predecessor (and Meese's protege), Richard Allen--a decision from which Meese was excluded. Clark demanded direct access to the President; Allen had reported through Meese. When Clark took charge, Meese effectively lost control of the foreign policy apparatus at the White House, which had been half of his charter. In domestic policy, which loomed large in the Administration's first year, the battles with Congress were waged largely by David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in conjunction with Baker.

The erosion of Meese's authority was accelerated by a series of political blunders. While Reagan was vacationing in California last summer, Meese decided not to awaken him when U.S. jet fighters shot down two Libyan planes over the Gulf of Sidra, thereby creating the impression that Reagan was not running the shop. During the President's vacations this summer, either Baker or Deaver is set to help Meese at the California White House. Meese was also responsible in part for getting the President to endorse tax-exempt status for private segregated schools, a policy that Reagan had to abandon after a loud public uproar.

Slow-moving and indecisive, Meese gradually lost control of the White House bureaucracy to the more efficient Baker. "This place needs a manager who can handle 25 balls in the air at one time," said a White House aide. "Meese couldn't do it." Meanwhile, Deaver emerged as the President's No. 1 confidant and troubleshooter. Meese undercut his own strength at the White House by traveling so much, giving speeches and attending G.O.P. fund raisers. During last year's tense Senate vote on the sale of AWACS-equipped planes to Saudi Arabia, for instance, Meese was out of town, as he was when Reagan was making a major foreign policy address three weeks ago at the U.N. The President inevitably has had to rely more heavily on other aides.

Although his role in the day-to-day operations of the White House has diminished, Meese insists that there has not been any major shift in the dynamics of the original troika. "It's exactly the same relationship," he says. "We are interchangeable." In fact, Meese now acts as a kind of utility infielder at the White House, preparing proposals for the President on largely secondary domestic issues. One example: the White House anticrime package, to be unveiled later this year. Meese has not lost the confidence of the President, or of Reagan's conservative supporters, who are still wary of the more moderate Baker. So Meese may not be the "deputy President" any more, but he has found a niche as Reagan's easygoing armchair counselor, a job he is likely to hold as long as he wants it. Says one White House aide: "He's a survivor." -

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.