President Reagan's public relations man cannot make ends meet on his $60,000 government salary.

So
he has decided to use the prestige of the White House and his newsworthiness as a key Presidential aide
to earn some outside income.

Mr. Deaver has contracted with a book publisher to attach his name to, and help publicize, a diet book.
The White House press corps, ordinarily vigilant on matters of lucrative moonlighting by public officials,
has assumed that nothing so ridiculous can be wrong. The reaction has been an orgy of metaphor:
Newsweek's plug says that Mr. Deaver ''hopes that his diet book will fatten his bank account''; Time
titters that ''he intends to reveal the details of his White House regimen for tightening belts, even as the
Federal deficit grows even fatter''; The Washington Post's headline was an admiring ''Deaver's Recipe:
Waist Not, Want Not.''

The conscience of the White House, counsel Fred Fielding, has approved the contract. Since the subject
of dieting has nothing to do with Mr. Deaver's government assignment, says Mr. Fielding, Mr. Deaver
does not profit from his public work; moreover, he has agreed to limit advances on royalties during his
White House service to 15 percent of his government income, or $9,000 a year.

We all know that it is proper for White House aides to collect royalties for works written before they
entered government. Many former aides -myself included - have profited from White House work by
writing about those low-pay, high-psychic-income times after returning to private life. So what is
different or unethical about what Mr. Deaver has done?

Everything. For the first time, a White House official has exploited his public position for substantial
commercial gain while still in office.

The only reason Mr. Deaver was approached to sign his name to this diet book is that he is President
Reagan's right-hand man. He is not a nutrition expert, a former Miss America or a movie queen - which
up to now has been the requirement for signers of faddist diet best sellers. Nor will his moneymaker be
a literary product written on his ''own time,'' since the book is to be ghost-written.

Had it been Michael Deaver, ordinary P.R. man, who lost 30 pounds washing down vegetables with
apple juice, his experience would have been of no interest to the publishing world; what makes his
name and book salable is the White House imprimatur that the troika member delivers.
The White House counsel insists that the contract (which is not available for public inspection) forbids
the use of the words ''White House'' in advertising. Let's be realists: Mr. Deaver is a publicity expert, and
his picture-posing appearances announcing the book have already emphasized his White House
connection and the fascination of losing weight among the high and mighty. Neither the publisher nor
the agent, my old friend Bill Adler, are doing anything wrong from their openly commercial viewpoint;
they cannot be faulted when the promotion focuses on the ''White House Diet,'' because that's the way
the story is set up to play.

Mr. Deaver's noble suffering over a limitation of $9,000 per year in royalties has nothing to do with
reality. To create a new outside-earnings loophole - the subject of much tugging and hauling in the
Congress - Mr. Deaver has apparently agreed to defer all royalty income over 15 percent of his
government salary until the day after he leaves the White House. In fact, however, he is earning that
outside income while he is still in office, and collecting it later. If anything is unethical, that is unethical.

The payoff will be considerable. Make a reasonable assumption that Mr. Deaver's White House diet
book sells 75,000 copies in hard cover, at about $15 a copy; that would mean more than $150,000 to
him. Using a 10-to-1 rule of thumb for the ratio of soft-cover to hardcover sales, and figuring a 50-50
split with the hard-cover publisher, the paperback would earn the author another $150,000. An
alternate choice of a major book club would add at least $25,000, and first serial magazine rights
$15,000 more. Newspaper syndication (the National Inquirer: ''Secrets of the White House Mess!'') and
foreign sales are hard to predict, but the royalty package before agent and ghost-writer fees could easily
top $300,000.

Few Tammany officeholders or revolving-door generals have had such golden parachutes. Mr. Deaver
cannot be insensitive to the stern dictates of appearances: it was he who demanded that Richard Allen
walk the plank over a wristwatch and a misplaced thousand dollars.

Basking in amused approval,