Clinton Presidency

Washington. -- It is supposed to be lonely at the top, but Bill Clinton can't stand to be alone. He is also supposed to be a man nTC of a thousand friends -- the famous FOBs, ''Friends of Bill'' -- but it seems that he trusts only one person, his wife, and they don't always get along very well.The president lives and works in the same building, and it has been a pretty wild place these past two years, edgy, disorganized, confused. Three hours before the president's third State of the Union message, his chief of staff, Leon Panetta, was briefing a few selected reporters on the speech, saying it would emphasize the problems of teen-age pregnancy and single parenting -- not knowing that the Clintons were locked away, alone together, changing most every word and adding 40 minutes of new ones.

The Obama re-election team must be in panic mode. The president is stuck in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in some polls and behind him in others, so in desperation it has reached out to the Big Dog, Bill Clinton, for help. Mr. Clinton will speak next month at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., in a Wednesday night position often reserved for the vice presidential nominee. Presidents Obama and Clinton have not had the most cordial relationship, but when you're drowning, your feelings about the lifeguard matter less than his ability to keep you afloat.

WASHINGTON - On paper, the most visible achievement of the $52 million Whitewater investigation that ended quietly yesterday was the 12 convictions of assorted Arkansas figures racked up by prosecutors over the years. But the investigation, which began more than six years ago with a look at an Arkansas land deal and grew to be the most expensive and wide-ranging government inquiry in U.S. history, appears to have left its stamp on everything from the Clinton presidency to public sentiment about government.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has famously declared that she wants her next job title to be "grandmother. " But a Harris Poll indicates that Mrs. Clinton is just about the only politician with a job approval rating above sea level. And a second survey suggests that American moms - remember the role of the soccer mom in 1996? - would rather vote for her for president than Barack Obama or any of the Republican candidates. It might be time to change the date on those "Hillary 2008" buttons.

CHICAGO -- In the third week of January 1995, President Clinton summoned several Cabinet-level officials to an emergency Oval Office meeting on the deteriorating economic crisis in Mexico.It was like no other meeting in the Clinton White House, and to one participant, the swift decisiveness of the president that day foreshadowed a reversal in the fortunes of the then-reeling Clinton presidency.Tonight, when Clinton addresses the Democratic National Convention, his approval rating will be above 50 percent, and his lead over Republican Bob Dole will be at least nine to 12 points.

Whoever said phonics and whole language are mutually exclusive was all theory and no practice.Make no threat you don't keep. Do what you said you would. Don't call intolerable what you do tolerate. Isolate Iraq, not the U.S.Fast track is really slow. The alternative is no track.It just won't seem like the Clinton presidency without Senate hearings.Pub Date: 11/05/97

How do non-Americans view this nation's new president after the first 100-plus days in office?Here's one point of view from England as expressed in The Guardian of London:"Politics is a cruel, groveling and interconnected profession. And politics has rapidly rubbed the sheen from the Clinton presidency. He is poised to resume nuclear testing: though he swore, running for office, that he would not. He was poised to take the Bosnian initiative: but now he has crept to the back of the stage -- and the word is that the Europeans once again have the 'lead role.

Whatever was happening to Bill Clinton's presidency through the first week in January did not matter to the rest of the world. Mr. Clinton had no great reputation out there. The world view of him was still, largely, what have those crazy Americans done this time?So it hardly mattered that twin scandals were eating away at the Clinton presidency. That just added to the quaint American charm of it.The difference between the first week in January and now is that, between, Bill Clinton became the leader of the world.

The sunstruck hordes staggering through Disney World might be surprised to learn of the ruthless corporate culture lurking behind Mickey and Goofy.That culture is the setting of a piece in the December Vanity Fair about the slow-motion humiliation of erstwhile Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz, who has struggled to stay afloat as president of Walt Disney Co.Plainly, the long knives are out for Ovitz. Just look at the number of Disney executives eager to tell co-authors Bryan Burrough and Kim Masters about Ovitz's misguided projects, petty power trips (employing half a dozen secretaries, keeping limo drivers on call even when he wasn't going anywhere)

PURSING ITS LIPS austerely, the electorate saw its duty and did it pitilessly. Feeling inclined to extend the Clinton presidency, it did so in a deflating manner, making him a lame duck on a short leash held by a Congress that probably will be controlled by Republicans for the rest of his tenure. His post-election smile could be construed as an inverted grimace.Voters gave Bill Clinton what history says is a recipe for disappointment -- a second term. And they allowed Republicans to retain control of the engine of government in this era of restored congressional supremacy.

WASHINGTON -- Federal archivists released yesterday 11,000 pages of schedules from Hillary Clinton's time as first lady, but the material offers little to support her assertion that her White House experience left her best prepared to become president. The records show her to be an active first lady who traveled widely and was deeply involved in health care policy, but they are rife with omissions, terse references and redaction that obscure many of her activities and the identities of those she saw. For months, the New York senator has faced calls to speed the release of about 2 million pages of material covering her eight years as first lady.

ATLANTA - Bill Clinton hopes to be acquitted by history. Fortunately for him, though, no subject of history is ever around to hear its verdict. Scholars will probably wonder what drove legions of conservatives to hate Mr. Clinton with such fury that they wasted years and spent a king's ransom trying to drive him from office. They will no doubt note that Mr. Clinton accomplished much despite the "vast right-wing conspiracy": He righted the nation's finances after decades of dangerous deficits.

BILL CLINTON is a big guy who undertakes everything he does in a big way. Enormously talented yet destructively flawed, the former president's turbulent life so far has been marked by great achievement and behavior that raises serious questions about his judgment. He clawed his way up from a wretched childhood to reach the pinnacle of American power but failed to fulfill his potential, brought down by his huge galaxy of enemies and his own self-indulgence. Memories of the combustible Clinton years in the White House are flooding back as the 42nd president whistle-stops from Oprah Winfrey to Larry King and most every forum in between to hawk the $10 million memoir that will help pay his remaining legal bills.

The Clinton Wars, by Sidney Blumenthal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 822 pages. $30 Former White House aide Sidney Blumenthal may have written this expansive account of the turbulent Clinton years in part to cover the $300,000 in legal bills he incurred as a result of his close counsel to the president and first lady and his knack for drawing fire. But more than anything, Blumenthal's review of the Clinton presidency feels like a book he had to write (and had to write at this indulgent length)

WASHINGTON - Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt began his presidency with a rush of legislative proposals in 1933, a yardstick of presidential vigor, if not accomplishment, has been a new leader's initiatives and record in his first 100 days in office. Three later Democratic presidents - John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton - all sought to evoke the same image of a new administration rushing pell-mell out of the starting gate to bring about change. So did two subsequent Republican leaders - President Ronald Reagan, with his talk about "draining the swamp" of big government in Washington, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his "Contract with America" aimed at doing much the same.

PRESIDENT CLINTON last week kept alive the option of U.S. participation in the establishment of a permanent international criminal court to try people suspected of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although Mr. Clinton is said to share the concerns of some in the Pentagon and Senate about certain aspects of the treaty, White House aides said he allowed a U.S. diplomat to sign the treaty as a defensive strategy. That was a good move. Had Mr. Clinton not acted by Dec. 31, the United States would have lost any chance of helping to shape the court's policies and procedures.

What a difference a summer makes. Wall Street, once firmly convinced that President Bush was marching toward certain re-election, has changed its tune. Financial pundits now realize that the presidential race probably will be close and that a win by Governor Clinton could hardly be termed a long shot.Some investment firms are getting mentally prepared for a Clinton presidency, while others remain tentative about accepting that possibility."Our firm is now presuming a Clinton victory, because the economy is a handicap for President Bush that won't be changing by November," says Eric Miller, chief investment strategist for Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.

WASHINGTON - On paper, the most visible achievement of the $52 million Whitewater investigation that ended quietly yesterday was the 12 convictions of assorted Arkansas figures racked up by prosecutors over the years. But the investigation, which began more than six years ago with a look at an Arkansas land deal and grew to be the most expensive and wide-ranging government inquiry in U.S. history, appears to have left its stamp on everything from the Clinton presidency to public sentiment about government.

NEW YORK - The Middle East conflict, which has preoccupied the United Nations for more than 50 years and the Clinton presidency for eight, dominated the agendas of both again yesterday as President Clinton pleaded with U.N. members to help nudge Israel and the Palestinians toward a final peace accord. "To those who have supported the right of Israel to live in security and peace, to those who have championed the Palestinian cause these many years, let me say to all of you: They need your support now more than ever to take the hard risks for peace," Clinton told the U.N. Millennium Summit, billed as the largest-ever assembly of world leaders.