Blame for Bork Debacle Likely to Fall on Baker

WASHINGTON —  When it began, the campaign for the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork appeared to present White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. with a difficult but manageable task.

After all, Baker--the former Senate majority leader who was brought to the White House seven months ago to restore order and competence after presidential aides apparently out of control had precipitated the Iran -contra debacle--was known as the quintessential congressional operator.

Now, the campaign to put Bork on the high court is a shambles and Baker is the subject of savage criticism from the nominee’s conservative supporters--criticism that threatens to inflict new damage on Ronald Reagan’s presidency at a point when it has little time left to recover and rebuild.

If the President is given bad advice by his staff, or if he fails in the high-visibility confrontations with Congress, “who pays the ultimate price? Ronald Reagan,” said a senior Administration official who has worked closely with the White House staff.

“Being chief of staff to any President is an impossible and thankless job,” said James Cannon, a longtime Baker confidant. But the job is crucial to the success of a President, particularly for Reagan at this late juncture in his presidency, when he faces a Congress controlled by the opposition and is being pushed and pulled by competing demands from conservatives and moderates of his own party.

And it is even more crucial because the heart of the Iran-contra affair contained embarrassing admissions that Reagan had not known about critical--possibly illegal--covert activities of White House aides and that Donald T. Regan, his then-chief of staff, himself was not fully informed. Restoring competent management was Baker’s primary task.

Strategy and Tactics

In the Bork fight, however, conservative critics charge that he bungled the strategy and tactics from the beginning. And even Baker’s defenders--while insisting that the nomination’s apparent failure is not his fault--acknowledge that Baker will have to take the blame.

In both Congress and the Republican Party, concern is growing that some of the very strengths that made Baker such an effective and respected Senate leader are now hampering him--and the White House.

Sources say his approach as chief of staff has been to work slowly to build a consensus among competing factions--demonstrating the finely honed skills of an experienced legislator, rather than the ability to take decisive action that is required in the executive branch of government.

“He’s treating this like he’s the Senate leader,” one source complained. “He’s got to make day-to-day decisions.”

Well-Organized Foes

For example, his critics say, decisive action would have mobilized the campaign to support Bork much earlier, before his well-organized opponents had fully developed their own strategy and put it into action to immediately place the nominee on the defensive.

When the campaign was finally under way, they charge, his aversion to confrontation helped undercut its effectiveness. And now, with Bork’s defeat imminent, some believe Baker is having difficulty with what is perhaps a chief of staff’s greatest challenge--managing his boss.

“For Baker, this is the first time he’s really in a dilemma. It’s his project, and political reality dictates that the President pull back from it,” said Samuel Kernell, a professor of political science at UC San Diego and the author of two books on presidential leadership. So far, the President has adamantly refused to take such a step and has insisted on pressing on to a full vote in the Senate.

The dilemma and the criticism come in sharp contrast to the praise and optimism that greeted Baker when he moved into his spacious office in the southwest corner of the White House on March 2 during the depths of the Iran-contra affair. He quickly shook up the White House staff and helped launch the Administration aggressively into the stretch run of its final year.

But Baker’s problems have emerged not just with the Bork debacle. Despite Baker’s concerted efforts to mend frayed relations with Congress and to use his skill and solid reputation on Capitol Hill to protect the Administration’s key programs, there have been other embarrassing defeats.

They included a highway bill passed by Congress over the President’s veto and a Pentagon budget that now includes arms control provisions opposed by the Administration.

One former Reagan aide who gushed with optimism last March when Baker replaced Regan but who was shaken by the collapse of the pro-Bork campaign, said: “It’s not a good battlefield commander who attacks without knowing the ground. I don’t think they plotted the ground.”

A Troubled Transition

One Baker ally acknowledged that the chief of staff has had a troubled transition--caught between the conflicting demands of Congress, his staff and his President’s supporters, while compelled to wholeheartedly implement his chief executive’s decisions.

“The Senate majority leader knows his troops and knows where they are and works with the President. That is a matter of patience, care, personal relations. When he went to the White House, he wasn’t one of them anymore. He is the President’s chief staff person.”

The point was made recently at a meeting between a Baker aide and a group of New York congressmen, who complained that Baker had been unable to sway the President from his refusal to even listen to proposals for tax increases to balance the federal budget.

“Listen, you bastards,” the aide said he told the congressmen, “he’s working for the President. He is no longer his own boss.”

Unavoidable Predicament

Some in Congress sympathize with what they see as Baker’s unavoidable predicament.

Baker “has not been misguiding the President. He’s been giving the President good advice. Sometimes his advice is not heeded,” said Rep. Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), the House majority leader.

But his critics--Republican conservatives chief among them--insist that the bottom line on Baker’s performance speaks for itself: a string of Administration failures.

“Howard Baker is strategizing and thinking like the moderate that he is. He genuinely has the disposition of somebody who doesn’t like conflict and really comes down in the middle,” said Paul M. Weyrich, President of the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative lobbying group. “This is essentially an Administration that’s scared. Howard Baker’s automatic reaction is a yellow light. He doesn’t understand the national coalition that put Reagan in office. The price is a presidency without punch.”

“Conservatives don’t feel part of any significant thing happening in the White House,” added Richard A. Viguerie, the conservative fund-raiser.

Reagan Defends Baker

On Thursday, the President defended his chief of staff. To a reporter who said the conservatives are blaming Baker for the shape the Bork campaign is in, Reagan replied: “I don’t know any conservatives who say that.”