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of presidents; Reagan enjoyed telling visitors that it was the very desk pictured in the famous photo of President Kennedy’s son John playing at his father’s feet. But there was just one problem: the Resolute desk did not fit Reagan. The arms of his large rolling chair bumped into the desktop, making it impossible for him to slide his legs under the writing surface. When he signed a bill or an executive order, Reagan had to shift his legs awkwardly to the side. The president did not want to have the legs of his favorite chair shortened, and he wouldn’t have dreamed of asking carpenters to alter the desk. Instead, he resigned himself to a bit of discomfort; the pleasure of working at the Resolute was worth it.

If the office did not yet have any Reagan flourishes, the president and first lady had managed to add a few personal touches. Reagan had placed several family photos on a credenza; a glass container of jelly beans, his favorite candy, stood on a coffee table next to one of the armchairs. The day before, he and Mrs. Reagan had moved some of the furniture around and put a set of miniature bronzed saddles on a display stand near a bookshelf.

As Reagan settled down to work, his three top advisors were summoned for the morning staff meeting. They were Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, Counselor Edwin Meese III, and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver. In most administrations, presidential power flows vertically from the president through a chief of staff. But unlike Carter and other presidents before him, Reagan delegated much of his authority, relying on his aides to shape policy and negotiate deals before coming to him for a decision or his final approval. He had left it to these advisors to organize his staff, which led to an unusual arrangement that divided control—sometimes unevenly—among the trio of ambitious aides.

Mike Deaver was closest to the president, but he was the antithesis of the hardy cowboy image cultivated by the Reagan White House. A former barroom piano player who grew up near the Mojave Desert, Deaver had a large, nearly bald dome of a head and a soft body, and bowed legs contributed to his shuffling gait. During Reagan’s years as governor of California, Deaver had been his chief scheduler, a job that had brought him into close contact with Nancy Reagan. He and the Reagans had become very friendly, and Deaver stuck with Reagan after he left Sacramento, helping to manage the former governor’s speaking engagements. He knew Reagan so well that others called him “the keeper of the body”; once, during the 1976 presidential campaign, he had even saved Reagan’s life by dislodging a peanut from the candidate’s throat during an airplane flight. Deaver, now forty-two, occupied the office closest to the president’s, just beyond a subtly disguised door in one wall of the Oval Office. A public relations man and an acknowledged master of the media, Deaver was already carefully managing public perception of the president by choreographing outings and events that projected the image of a vibrant and engaged leader.

Ed Meese, forty-nine, was another member of Reagan’s California inner circle who had followed the president to Washington. An amiable and cautious former prosecutor, Meese had recently retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. But he did not look like a soldier; instead, with his jowly face and plain gray suits, he resembled a high school math teacher. The tip of his tie usually rode an inch below his belt, and the brown case of his reading glasses almost always jutted from his shirt pocket. Like Deaver, Meese was close to Reagan, but their relationship was more professional than personal. A fourth-generation Californian, he had served as chief of staff while Reagan was governor and was skilled at synthesizing complex ideas. Early on, he’d been considered a front-runner for the post of presidential chief of staff, but his weak organizational skills sank his candidacy. Insiders called his briefcase the Meesecase, or, more explicitly, the Black Hole.

During the transition, a number of