DIGGING OUT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000301290088-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2013
• Sequence Number: 88
• Publication Date: March 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/05/21 : CIA-RDP99-01448R000301290088-8
WASHINGTON POST
io+i :.~..:c 1 March 1987
Digging Out
HOWARD BAKER and Frank Carlucci as
the president's two principal White House
assistants will be a vast improvement over
Donald Regan and John Poindexter. You won't
get an argument from practically anyone on that.
Far from it, there is-oddly, given the fact that it
has been only a matter of days since Disaster
seemed to prevail-something akin to euphoria in
the air. People who only hours before were sunk
in bleakest fugues suddenly all seemed to be
singing "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!" More
than Howard Baker's popularity or Donald Re-
gan's lack of it was responsible. Another element
was surely the perception that people had been
put in charge who know how to govern and care
about governing, people who actually respect
both the process and those who have chosen to
involve themselves in it.
It is worth noting that we go through these
things periodically in Washington, a kind of ca-
thartic experience in which it is finally agreed by
some stubborn president or other that it would be
well for the White House to recognize that the
other end of Pennsylvania Avenue exists and to
put some people in place who not only have civil
relations with the rest of the city, but also partake
in the ancestral memory of how things get done
here. We thought Mr. Carlucci fit this bill nicely
when he was appointed, and we think the same of
Sen. Baker. Mr. Baker is an honest, personable
and extremely intelligent man. He is a man who
likes other people and who likes governing, and
he is a grown-up. As Senate Republican leader in
President Reagan's earlier days, Mr. Baker right-
ly challenged him on fiscal policy. He will be a
loyal assistant. But he is no yes man, so he will
also be a valuable assistant.
But Howard Baker is not going to be president. It
is Ronald Reagan who has the comeback to make.
There has been a kind of drum roll for this
comeback. You get the sense that the president is
about to step back on stage in some new role, that
he has been sustained and even invigorated by the
closing of Republican ranks, the dramatic consul-
tations, the suspense, the desperate calls upon him
to reappear and demonstrate that he is not the
somnambulant, unfocused figure who emerges from
the pages of the Tower Commission Report. We
suspect that he is about to do it. And we hope that
he is, that the administration will not be immobilized
into a final two years of drift by the exposure of the
terrible Iran-contra folly.
But, importantly, more than cosmetic changes
are required if the comeback is to have meaning.
People need to know that Mr. Reagan has under-
stood what went so wrong in his national security
advisers' activities and that he has faced his own
part in it. In the coming week the president will
indicate, by his actions and in his appearances,
whether he has done so. One other thing: the
senators who are warning_Mr. Reagan that he
,should with raw his nomination of Ro rt ates
to be director of the CIA are right. Mr. Gates has
undoubted _ qualities as an analyst a-ncmanagerr
but he has emerged from both -his hearings and
the Tower Commission Report as just not big
enough or strong enougfor the job. The-presi-
dent will be setting about to restore confidence in
himself and his. government after a very bad
period. He will need to show he understands what
went wrong and that he means things to be
different now. Howard Baker is a right signal to
send on that account. Robert Gates is no villain,
but he is not a right signal or the right man either.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/05/21 : CIA-RDP99-01448R000301290088-8