Word: darman
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...both in the classroom and on the playing field. While trying to secure a starter's place on the football team, he played one quarter with a fractured arm. Eventually he became the team's captain and won letters in three other sports. But although he grew up affluent, Darman also felt the influence of his mother Eleanor, a liberal involved in medical social service. Later Darman mused that he "bumbled" into government work as a means of bridging his father's and mother's impulses...
...M.B.A. at Harvard, he did research on education policy that led to a job at the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Secretary Richardson soon drew him into his personal circle. As Richardson toured the Nixon and Ford Cabinets -- serving as head of Defense, Justice and Commerce -- Darman followed. Richardson, a problem-solving progressive who wore his Republicanism lightly, even served Jimmy Carter as vice chairman of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea. With that political lineage and a wife describing herself as "alas, a good old-fashioned liberal," Darman was hardly...
That he was there at all was due to James Baker, whom he had met at Commerce. Though the new chief of staff, Baker was something of an alien. He needed loyal, experienced professionals as a bulwark against right-wing rivals. Darman filled that role eagerly. Eagerly, but not comfortably. The older Reaganauts sometimes suspected him of ideological subversion. He in turn took a grandiose view of himself as an all-purpose antidote to the amateurism of some of his elders. "Every single thing that moved," he says, "I felt responsible for." His influence rose steadily...
There the atmosphere was more relaxed, and Darman could concentrate on big- ticket successes, such as the tax-reform act and currency-exchange rates. By then Darman had survived some of his conservative antagonists and made peace with others. Twenty-one months ago, he took a respite by going into investment banking. But a Republican victory in 1988, he knew, would be an opportunity for a new assignment. He wanted his own command this time, free of senior patrons, such as Richardson and Baker. Though he lacked a strong relationship with Bush, he was soon an economic adviser. Darman...
...exposure became intense last fall, when Darman was chosen to play Michael Dukakis in preparing Bush for the debates. "One of the reasons he was picked," says Bush's media adviser, Roger Ailes, "was his reputation for being aloof and arrogant, just like Dukakis." Though tough in the sparring, Darman softened his performances with humor. At the end of one mock match, he entertained Bush by donning a tank helmet like the one Dukakis wore in a TV ad. Next round, he displayed a pair of Heavyhands, the weights Dukakis uses in speed-walking. In the critique sessions afterward, Ailes...