Word: deaver
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...shape a policy consensus that he can accept, modify or reject. One answer is easy: there is no doubt which aides are most important. The so-called troika of Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, 50, White House Chief of Staff James Baker, 51, and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver, 42, almost constitutes an inner government. But how they are organized and operate is difficult even for the participants to describe. The troika is a puzzling three-headed creature that defies all the usual rules of orderly administration...
...defined; they overlap and intersect at a thousand points. The personalities differ in substantive ways. Meese, a cautious lawyer and the most conservative of the troika, specializes in summarizing conflicting arguments without committing himself. Baker, also a lawyer, is a hard-driving organizer with finely tuned political instincts. Deaver, an affable former public relations consultant, is concerned, above all, with the welfare and comfort of the First Family. Californians Meese and Deaver have been working with each other, and with Reagan, on and off since 1967, when both joined the Administration of the ex-movie star who had just been...
Well, maybe. The handling of the Allen affair does point to subtle strains and tensions within the group. But so far, at least, the troika has put on a spectacular show of unity. Meese, Baker and Deaver are constantly in and out of each other's offices, as well as Reagan's. They eat breakfast together in Baker's large corner office at 7:30 every morning that all three are in Washington, to review problems and options, plus the day's agenda for Reagan and themselves. Says one White House aide: "That breakfast is the key to the kingdom...
...three invariably occupy the same positions: Baker at the head of the table, Deaver on his right, Meese on his left. But no one presides; they just talk. TIME White House Correspondent Laurence I. Barrett, attending a breakfast last week, observed that they began exchanging papers and ticking off items on the day's schedule even before a steward served the first course (cantaloupe for Meese and Baker, grapefruit for Deaver). Early though it was, all three had read the White House daily news summary. Deaver and Baker expressed concern about attacks on the Administration's prospective new budget cuts...
Long familiarity enables the three to talk in a kind of clipped shorthand, and on occasion they even finish each other's sentences. Over the second course (cold cereal for Baker and Meese, a Western omelet for Deaver) the breakfast talk turned to a prospective White House order allowing striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization to be hired for some Government jobs (though not again as controllers). Meese suggested some precise lawyerly language. Said Baker: "I think the PATCO stuff came out . . . " Deaver finished: ". . . just the way it should have...