Canny and Candid, Ickes Becomes Health Reform’s Point Man : Son of Roosevelt-era icon brings political savvy but offbeat style to White House. Insiders see him going far.

WASHINGTON — The scene is an early morning staff meeting at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, where a throng of Clinton campaign aides are debating, at mind-numbing length, the relative merits of printed and hand-lettered signs, of white-on-red ones versus blue-on-white ones.

At one end of the table, Harold M. Ickes is pacing, opening and closing his eyes with the look of a man in the grip of an excruciating headache. Finally, he raises his arm to order silence.

“This may not be the greatest policy issue this group will ever decide,” he snaps. “But let’s get a decision.”

This snippet, from the documentary film “The War Room,” offers a glimpse of the style of the labor lawyer and veteran Democrat who joined the White House last month to manage the Administration’s centerpiece health reform program. With long campaign experience and legendary bluntness, Ickes is charged with plotting tactics, cobbling a political alliance and maintaining order among the two dozen-odd White House staff members who spend most of their time on the massive project.

“He doesn’t tolerate ineptitude or sloppiness,” said Jack Quinn, Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff.

Ickes’ mission recently has been broadened to include supervision of the White House efforts to minimize losses in the mid-year elections. Some insiders are predicting that even wider influence lies ahead for the 54-year-old Ickes at the White House--provided, of course, all goes smoothly with health reform.

The son of Harold L. Ickes, longtime Interior secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ickes’ assets include strong personal ties to President Clinton, whom he met in 1972. The bonds were strengthened in 1992 when Ickes helped guide a battle-scarred Clinton through the pivotal New York primary, ran the Democratic Convention and put in dutiful service in the White House transition.

Ickes has been unafraid to disagree forcefully with Hillary Rodham Clinton--a habit that is somewhat rare in the White House but one that the First Lady apparently likes. “I give her my candid advice,” he said mildly.

Also on his side is Thomas (Mack) McLarty, whose regard for Ickes’ skills was evident when, on the day of Ickes’ arrival, he asked the New Yorker to temporarily oversee handling of developments in the Whitewater land deal.

That assignment, however, has earned Ickes criticism from some who believed his acute political antennae failed an early test. He was among those who joined in a controversial February meeting between White House aides and Treasury officials to discuss the status of Whitewater. As a result, last Friday he became one of six White House aides to receive subpoenas from the special counsel investigating the Whitewater affair.

Still unclear is how Ickes will share power with the forceful personalities involved in the health reform effort, including George Stephanopoulos, the presidential adviser; Margaret Williams, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and--perhaps especially--Ira Magaziner, the senior policy aide who is the plan’s primary architect. Magaziner is to remain the health team’s senior policy expert, while Ickes will play the role of manager and have a greater role with lawmakers and interest groups, among others.

But neither of the two is supposed to outrank the other, and their roles remain somewhat undefined.

Ickes’ resume would appear to have some shortcomings for his new position. He has no background in health care, and his only direct experience with Congress was working for a congressman in the summer of 1967.

“I’m not steeped in the policy,” Ickes acknowledged. But he maintains that the White House has already assembled a “very skillful team” that is well-equipped for policy-making and congressional relations.

Ickes has labored for most of his political career for a long list of liberal candidates: Eugene J. McCarthy, Morris Udall, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and, last year, former New York Mayor David N. Dinkins.

Asked if his long ties to liberals could make it difficult for him to broker a deal on the reform bill with conservatives, Ickes slyly interrupted: “Ed Muskie!” His work for the more moderate Maine senator, he meant, shows that his ties have not been exclusively with the left.

And the idea of compromise, he insisted, “wouldn’t be a problem for me.”

Without question, he is one of the more unexpected personalities in a White House that tilts to the conventional.

A man whose speech hints at his privileged background, Ickes fancies bright floral ties, French cuffs and expensive cuff links. He wears his belt buckle on his hip. He buys classically tailored suits--and hangs onto them for many years.

After a look at his wardrobe, his 9-year-old daughter recently observed, disapprovingly, that he dressed like Sky Masterson, the street-slick hero of the musical “Guys and Dolls.” Masterson’s wardrobe ran to fedoras, double-breasted suits, light ties and dark shirts.

Ickes is a knowledgeable sailor, teaching himself the skill from a book when he was 50 years old. Instinctively frugal, he has been known to prowl friends’ homes turning off lights when he thinks they’re not needed.

Ickes has a love for the West that developed at his family’s ranch when he was young, and he still rides horses. He grew up in Washington, where his family lived while his father was a Cabinet member from 1933 to 1945. But he came to mistrust the city, and after high school wanted to get as far from it as he could.

He spent two years breaking horses on Western ranches before going on to Stanford University and Columbia University law school.

His speech, often peppered with profanities, reminds friends of how much he inherited from his father, the converted Bullmoose Republican who paddled the mighty and meek during his 13 years in the Cabinet.

Still, others who have worked with the younger Ickes insist that they’ve seen only a genteel, even diffident side. Some political comrades speculate that the tough-guy image may be a bit of a convenient fiction.

Clinton asked him in 1992 to manage his campaign, when a number of political veterans were receiving such invitations. After the election, he wanted Ickes to come aboard as deputy chief of staff.

The move was held up for a year by allegations that Ickes’ Mineola, N.Y., law firm had represented a union with ties to organized crime. But last December, when an investigation found no support for those allegations, Ickes balked again at a move--partly out of concern about the disruption that it would create for his daughter and his wife, who is an attorney, and partly from the change it would force in his own practice.

Ickes has gotten an ample taste of the job’s rewards--and frustrations--since he moved into a warren of offices in the White House basement, just around the corner from presidential adviser David Gergen.

He helped oversee the many revisions to the State of the Union Address, mediated arguments among aides on whether Clinton should threaten in the speech to veto an unacceptable health reform bill and immersed himself in the efforts--largely unsuccessful--to sell the health plan to business groups. In his own view, the White House invested too much effort in trying to win over the Business Roundtable, he has said privately.

His current assignment is expected to call on the tactical skills he developed while campaigning.

In the 1992 New York primary, Ickes helped Clinton find his way through a minefield of challenges from labor, liberals, blacks and the forces of his chief rival in the state, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. Building from the support of the Dinkins camp of New York Democrats, Ickes patched together a coalition.

He was among those who urged Clinton to confront Brown on a Phil Donahue television program, a move that generated substantial amounts of favorable press coverage. But he had “reservations,” he concedes, about another Clinton move--his much-discussed decision to challenge rap singer Sister Souljah at an event sponsored by Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.

Circumspect in discussing his current assignment, Ickes is expansive when the topic turns to his days as tactician for Democratic presidential candidates.

In 1988, for instance, Ickes found a way to win more favorable treatment for Jackson at the Democratic convention.

Talking with an aide to Michael S. Dukakis, Ickes suddenly excused himself to go to a phone. There he launched into a loud conversation about 1,500 whistles the Jackson delegates planned to receive--a pointed reminder of the noise the delegation could generate if it was unsatisfied.

The Dukakis aide “got red as a beet,” Ickes said. “He knew if we had the whistles, we would use them.” Jackson, naturally, got what he wanted.

Profile: Harold M. Ickes

* Born: Sept. 4, 1939.

* Education: Graduated from Stanford University in 1964 and Columbia University law school in 1971.

* Career highlights: Throughout the 1970s, he worked on various state and national campaigns including Morris Udall’s presidential campaign in 1976. In 1989, he was special counsel to the Democratic National Committee. Managed Clinton’s New York presidential campaign and was manager of the Democratic National Convention in July, 1992. Clinton named him deputy director of the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team in 1992. Joined the law firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, P.C. in 1978.

* Personal: Married to Laura Rose Handman, has one daughter.

Source: White House Press Office, Times staff