Behind the Scenes.

• Author: Noah, Timothy

POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Behind the Scenes. Michael K. Deaver. William Morrow, $17.95. Last year the movie No Way Out told the story of a secretary of defense who murders his mistress and then, through a variety of sinister strategems, covers it up. As usual, Hollywood depicted Washington as more glamorous and conventionally evil than it really is, especially when it comes to sex. However, the plot took an original twist. The defense secretary's special assistant, an obsessive toady, turned out (it was hinted) to be in love with the boss. At last the film-makers had stumbled onto an insight about Washington's bureaucratic culture: the intimacy between a powerful official and his special assistant is a kind of illicit romance.

Mike Deaver's is the classic Cinderella story. No one paid much attention to this son of a Shell Oil distributor when he was growing up in Bakersfield, California. An early bout with kidney disease meant he could never gain acceptance as an athlete; the only reason his San Jose State fraternity accepted him was that they needed a piano player. After a brief, unhappy stint as an IBM sales rep, Deaver drifted into the world of Republican state politics. There he met a dashing governor named Ronald Reagan.

For the next 20 years, Deaver never departed Reagan's side. When Reagan left Sacramento, Deaver followed him to Los Angeles and set up a public relations firm near Reagan's house. When Reagan left Los Angeles, Deaver followed him to Washington and unpacked his bags beside the Oval Office. When his wife told him his dependence on Ronald Reagan was too great, he would answer: "You don't understand. I'm the only guy who can help this man in this way." And when he finally left the Reagan administration to set up a Washington lobbying firm, he couldn't bring himself to turn in his White House pass. The investigations into Deaver's lobbying and the perjury conviction that followed all resulted from his inability to make a clean break with the Reagan White House. Like Othello, Deaver loved not wisely but too well.

What spawned this romance? Idealism can't be discounted; Deaver seems genuinely to believe in the goodness of Ronald Reagan. But Reagan was also Deaver's Prince Charming, sweeping him off his feet with the promise of a more glamorous life. As Deaver puts it, "My exposure to the Reagans did give me an appreciation for good things, a fine painting, the best piano." Deaver acquired a taste for Heitz Chardonnay. He named his...