Word: haig
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White House officials were taking considerable satisfaction from last week's smooth progress in Rome. "If we could just do it like this all the time," sighed one top presidential aide. Gone for the moment, although not entirely forgotten, were Haig's early tactical errors: trying to get Reagan to give him total control of foreign policy; threatening, all but publicly, to resign over the selection of Vice President George Bush as chief of crisis management; announcing, in a trembling, unsteady voice on the day President Reagan was shot, that he was "in control" at the White House...
...Haig seems to have set aside his struggles for turf, for example, with Agriculture Secretary John Block over the grain embargo against the Soviet Union, and with Special Trade Representative Bill Brock over Japanese auto imports. In recent weeks he actively lobbied the White House for a fresh start. Peace apparently has been made...
Part of the problem is that even the newly chastened Haig still has not turned his full attention to making policy. Moreover, for most of his career he has been a tireless executor of policy rather than a creator, and he still appears to prefer working twelve-hour days to delegating authority...
...Haig's failings are less serious than chronic shortcomings at the White House. In an effort to keep the National Security Council from becoming an alternative State Department, a role it took on in the Carter and Nixon Administrations, the White House has denied National Security Adviser Richard Allen an adequately trained and able staff for his stripped-down duties of coordinating policy and briefing the President...
Partly because of White House disorganization and Haig's early grab for power, Allen has not demonstrated much authority in his job. He failed to persuade presidential aides that the proposed sale of the sophisticated AWACS airborne radar system to Saudi Arabia faced probable defeat in Congress. As a result, Reagan okayed the deal over Haig's objections...