Reagan Image-Maker Changed American Politics

Washington insiders were stunned at the conviction and blamed it on Deaver's attorney's decision not to call witnesses or mount a vigorous defense. Deaver was sentenced to three years' probation and 1,500 hours community service, plus a $100,000 fine. He lost many of his clients and virtually all of his assets.

"Looking back, I guess one tip-off was that he really enjoyed the trappings of power," wrote former Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes in his memoir, "The Reagan Presidency From Inside the White House" (1988). "His office contained dozens of photographs, framed in silver, of Deaver with kings, queens, and prime ministers, many of whom he had prevailed on for autographs. There was a lot of the small-town kid from Bakersfield, California, in him, and I suppose he just got carried away with his own importance."

Born into a working-class family in Bakersfield on April 11, 1938, Deaver grew up there and in Mojave, Calif. In his youth, he worked as a newspaper delivery boy and a soda jerk, among other jobs.

Not athletic enough for sports, Deaver said his piano playing paid for college at San Jose State University and later got him into the secretive Bohemian Club. He was still in his 20s, an IBM trainee and small-time political operative when he went to Sacramento to be a bit player in the Reagan gubernatorial administration. One of his major tasks -- and one that no one else wanted -- was to deal with Nancy Reagan.

"From the inside, the reviews on Nancy were not pleasant," Deaver later wrote. "Many who dealt with her said she was at best demanding, a tough-minded political wife who needed constant attention."

But Deaver and Nancy Reagan hit it off, and he was brought into the Reagans' inner circle. So close did he become to the Reagans that he said, "I always imagined that when I died there would be a phone in my coffin, and at the other end of it would be Nancy Reagan."

When Reagan won the presidency in 1980, Deaver, his wife and growing family considered staying behind in California. But not for long. He sold his stake in a Sacramento public relations firm and moved East, where he, Edwin Meese III and James A. Baker III became the troika that ran the administration.

Deaver was seen everywhere with the president. He set the calendar and schedule, as he had in California, and focused his attention on whether a particular action would be good for Reagan.

Eschewing policy, Deaver gradually evolved into the most talented stage manager of his political generation, dubbed by Time magazine "the vicar of visuals."

His hubris earned him enemies, he later realized. He wrote in a memoir that he helped prevent Meese from becoming chief of staff and had a key role in the firings or resignations of Interior Secretary James G. Watt, budget director David A. Stockman, Secretary of State Alexander Haig and national security adviser William P. Clark, who had hired Deaver when Reagan was elected governor. Deaver didn't return phone calls, and the media considered him insufferably arrogant.

"I was careless, stupid, inattentive to the enemies I made," he wrote. "Overconfidence did me in."

But his relationship with the Reagans could not have been better. He was a routine guest at their Christmas dinner table and was often described as a member of the family. Nancy Reagan released a statement yesterday in which she said Deaver "was like a son to Ronnie."