(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE MAKING AND SELLING of economic policy during the first six months of Ronald Reagan's first term seemed as smooth as a Chopin waltz. The first six months of his second term have sounded more like a high school band warming up. Says a leading business lobbyist: ''It's chaos, anarchy.'' Confirms a top presidential aide: ''It's a disaster.'' The disarray has been most evident in the selling of the President's 1986 budget. At the outset the White House seemed to be letting Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole and Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici fend for themselves. The Administration agreed to a Senate compromise that didn't have the votes to pass. And it permitted the controversial vote on aid to the Nicaraguan contras to be scheduled the week the Senate began the budget debate, a move guaranteed to splinter congressional attention. Then White House policymakers were distracted by the furor over the President's visit to a German cemetery. Days before the first Senate votes on the budget were to be held, key Cabinet officers had yet to be enlisted to help sell the Reagan compromise. Says a frustrated business lobbyist: ''If this budget gets through, the victory will be Pete Domenici's and Bob Dole's.'' The most glaring problem has been a dearth of skillful salesmanship of the President's program by the Administration. Former chief of staff James Baker III and his tough-minded deputy, Richard Darman, were the stellar policy salesmen of Reagan's first term. But so far Baker's successor, Donald Regan, has not shown Baker's fine political touch in dealing with Congress, and he has not appointed a much needed deputy to help orchestrate tactics and keep the troops in line. Laments a White House insider: ''There's a big void.'' The Administration's economic policy-making machinery, redesigned by Regan, has been slow to rev up. Regan won kudos for his plan. Almost a month after the reorganization was announced, however, neither of the two Cabinet councils he created -- one chaired by Treasury Secretary Baker and the other by Attorney General Edwin Meese -- had held a meeting. The result has been a new wave of economic ad-hockery. When Lionel Olmer, Under Secretary of Commerce for international trade, and William Brock, until recently the special trade representative, began openly criticizing Japan's trade policies, they apparently were just speaking their own minds, not pursuing some grand strategy. Baker, for his part, informed Secretary of State George Shultz of his proposal for an international monetary conference -- a major shift in diplomatic rhetoric and perhaps policy -- only shortly before he announced it. So much for policy coordination. The Council of Economic Advisers has been moribund since the departure of chairman Martin Feldstein last July. It has barely begun to revive with the confirmation in April of Beryl Sprinkel, former Under Secretary of the Treasury for monetary affairs, as chairman. Regulatory expert Thomas Moore of Stanford University's Hoover Institution is expected to be named to fill the council's second seat, but the third slot remains empty. Sprinkel is feisty and close to Regan, but he's unlikely to restore the council's former stature quickly. White House strategists have been claiming for a long time that 1985 is a critical ''window of opportunity'' for reaching President Reagan's major economic goals. Yet action on the federal budget still seems far off, and congressional tax writers warn that passage of the President's tax reform package this year is unlikely. The window is closing.