The president, though, was more comfortable with his new "chief operating officer" than with almost any previous staff member. The two men swapped jokes like locker room buddies. Many of them were off-color in an old-fashioned sort of way. The two elderly men, for instance, were observed on one occasion elbowing each other like schoolboys after savoring an intelligence report detailing the improbably active sex life of the octogenarian Tunisian president, Habib Bourguiba. Even in jest, however, Regan had ulterior motives; he once confided to an aide that he had stumbled on a key to Reagan's heart: "I always let him tell his joke first." By Easter, Regan got the supreme compliment of being invited socially to the ranch. "Reagan admired Regan," said Deaver, "because, in a sense, he was exactly what Reagan wasn't: hands on."
In fact, an unspoken dividend of "letting Reagan be Reagan" was that this allowed the president to delegate so much to Regan. Reagan was fond of telling his staff, "Don't bring me problems - bring me solutions," and Regan was happy to comply. Before long, critics began to believe that Regan had cast himself in the role of prime minister. As Ed Rollins saw it, "He figured, if Ronald Reagan didn't want to be president all the time, he would be. Probably eighty percent of the decisions made during his era were made by Regan."
This concentration of power put a great strain on Regan and his staff, a staff not particularly adept or experienced. Regan methodically filled crucial While House posts with loyalists, many from his Treasury staff. Observers like Max Friedersdorf, who had worked with five chiefs of staff before Regan, described the staff as "obsequious yes men" who would laugh at all his Jokes. It was just sickening." A more generous view was that they were a well-meaning and able enough group of mostly young men who were simply cast in the wrong roles. They inherited a second-term White House badly in need of fresh political thinking but, in the words of one of their own members, Christopher Hicks, "we were implementers, organization guys not policymakers." Moreover, Regan didn't like being contradicted.
Jane Mayer "Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984-1988" (1988)
