From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

"This is like The Perils of Pauline," Richard Darman joked on the phone last Friday morning, only hours after his plan for reducing the federal deficit had gone down to a resounding defeat in the House of Representatives. At the other end of the line was Michael Duffy, one of TIME's two White House correspondents, who has been following the talks and the Budget Director's role in them since last May.

Darman's lighthearted remark was exactly the kind of comment Duffy has come to expect from the man who once donned a gorilla suit to celebrate the President's birthday. Darman has a habit of leavening even the darkest moments with humor. Throughout the budget talks, Darman's spirits were often at their highest when the odds of forging the deal seemed longest. Or, Duffy wondered, was it merely nervous anxiety? Did Darman, the master strategist, know how it would all turn out? Or was he making it up as he went along?

It was precisely questions of this kind that led us to focus our reporting on Darman's role in the budget battle. To track the negotiations behind the scenes, Duffy interviewed dozens of officials from both the Administration and Congress, and had several sessions with Darman in his office. Duffy found the interviews with Darman "the most challenging of my career" because the Budget Director relishes a thoroughgoing exploration of every topic, rarely letting a question go by without examining its premises in depth.

Duffy's conclusion after all those discussions: "The budget summit was a big roll of the dice for Darman. He was either going to succeed greatly or fail greatly."

For Duffy, the Darman story was a natural assignment. A correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau for five years, he reported on budget battles as a congressional correspondent in 1986 and 1987. When he and TIME's Dan Goodgame teamed up to cover the White House after Bush's election, watching Bush disentangle himself from his no-new-taxes campaign pledge became a favorite pastime. "It was obvious that Bush would have to reverse himself sometime," said Duffy last week, "and it was also obvious that Darman would call the shots."