Michael Deaver is back, helping out with the Dole campaign. In fact, the former Reagan staffer who designed the administration’s public “look” will be handling the visuals at the Republican convention in San Diego in August. Not the words, mind you, but the images from the podium. Deaver is telling people he will be in charge of “everything but the heads” of the speakers. He’ll be working with convention manager Paul Manafort, a longtime Washington political consultant who has privately been letting friends know he has been given an additional assignment — he will, he says, head up the vice- presidential operation after the convention. He has already been interviewing prospective staffers, among them Lanny Wiles, a former advance man for Phil Gramm and Dan Quayle. Message to Manafort: Whoever is chosen as vice president might wish to have his own team, especially after the experience of Dan Quayle in 1988, when Quayle’s so-called “handlers” did little except trash the vice-presidential nominee to the press corps traveling with him.
