The Danger Is That Baker Will Make a Good President

The good news is that Howard H. Baker Jr. has become the White House chief of staff. The former Tennessee senator’s appointment has been welcomed by virtually everybody who matters in Washington, with the exception of a few right-wing ideologues.

In terms of political smarts and substantive knowledge, Baker appears admirably suited for the job: He can forge consensus among the President’s competing senior advisers; he can elicit bipartisan support in Congress; he can help Ronald Reagan regain the public credibility that was lost as a result of the Iran- contra debacle. We expect Baker to do all those things, and many of us will be disappointed if he doesn’t.

That, it turns out, is the bad news. Baker is being asked to do what we normally elect Presidents to do. By appointing as chief of staff someone who himself is qualified to occupy the Oval Office, President Reagan has accentuated the main problem created by former Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan.

The main problem with Regan was not that he mishandled the Iran-contra affair. It was that he tried to convert the chief-of-staff position into a premiership of the kind associated with European parliamentary systems--without, of course, being elected. Rather than help the President control the ship of state, Regan tried to take the helm. In the process, Regan caused us to expect less of a President and more of a chief of staff.

Although Regan has been forced from the White House, his most important legacy has been passed on to Howard Baker.

The danger is that Baker will succeed where Regan failed. He may very well do all the things that the President, Congress, the media and the public expect him to do. If so, he may further erode the presidency and greatly alter what the voters look for in presidential candidates. Instead of asking which Oval Office aspirant is best able to govern, we may start asking which of them best symbolizes a nation that, on a day-to-day basis, is in the hands of an appointed regent.

Already the vice presidency has been vitiated. One bit of evidence is the President’s March 4 address to the nation concerning the Iran arms affair. In that speech Reagan heaped praise on Baker, on the members of the Tower Commission and on his recently appointed national-security adviser, Frank C. Carlucci. But he mentioned the vice president only in passing, as if merely to remind us that the office still exists.

By all accounts, Howard Baker is as modest and self-effacing as he is competent. Under normal circumstances he probably would avoid the limelight as assiduously as Donald Regan sought it. But these are not normal circumstances. Even some of Ronald Reagan’s avid admirers have begun to wonder aloud whether he still has the physical stamina, the emotional interest and the mental acuity needed to run the government.

Baker, then, confronts two tasks that may be contradictory: to manage the White House in a way that compensates for this particular President’s shortcomings, and to keep the presidency itself from being reduced to a largely symbolic office.

The new chief of staff has been put up onto the political high wire that his predecessor built. He has a tough balancing act.