Economic Security

PRESIDENT Clinton has at last offered a basic theme to define his administration, and it is a good one -- security. In a major address last Tuesday in Chapel Hill, N.C., the president astutely linked "economic security, health care security, personal security."Connecting this theme to his oft-repeated campaign mantra -- "We must change" -- he told his audience: "People resist change when they are most insecure." Distinguishing his conception of security from a culture of dependency, Mr. Clinton declared, "The security we seek is like a rope for a rock-climber, lifting those who will take responsibility for their own lives to even greater pinnacles.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Trying to put the world's hot spots of Haiti and Somalia behind him, President Clinton traveled outside Washington yesterday to promote his ambitious domestic agenda of anti-crime measures, a free-trade agreement and health care reform.Mr. Clinton said he is trying to offer security in tumultuous times -- "health security, economic security and personal security.""The security I seek for America is like a rope for a rock climber, to lift those who will take responsibility for their own lives to greater and greater pinnacles," Mr. Clinton said at the bicentennial convocation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The return of Andreas Papandreou fills European Community officialdom with dismay. Yet he cannot champion the Soviet bloc as he did in his last prime ministry of Greece: the bloc is not there. He will have a hard time supporting Middle Eastern terrorism: regimes dedicated to it are fewer, isolated and spotlighted. As for making trouble for Europe's newest nation, Macedonia, the ousted Constantine Mitsotakis was already doing that.In winning Greece's election Sunday with 171 seats in the 300-member parliament, Mr. Papandreou and his Panhellenic Socialist Movement managed one of the great political comebacks.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, ha emerged as President-elect Bill Clinton's top choice for secretary of the Treasury, Clinton campaign officials said last night.Mr. Bentsen, 71, has been informed that he is Mr. Clinton's first choice for the sensitive economics post, but officials of the transition team have not yet completed the required background examination of his financial records.If Mr. Bentsen is the final selection, the formal announcement of his nomination would likely come next week as Mr. Clinton names the members of his economics team.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- President-elect Bill Clinton probably will postpone the appointment of top Cabinet officers until early December, focusing instead on a plan to overhaul the government's uppermost echelon to give economic affairs unprecedented status, according to his advisers.The plan, which officials of his transition team described yesterday as Mr. Clinton's priority, would create a new Economic Security Council in the White House whose power and authority would parallel that of the existing National Security Council.

Esterhaza, Hungary. -- The years between 1945 and 1989 were a tunnel, through which the East European peoples passed, all but completely cut off from the cultural as well as political and economic development of the liberal West.The people in this region grew up in isolation, experiencing a shabby economic security and a rigidly doctrinaire education and public culture. They now find their economic security destroyed by their countries' convulsive attempts at economic renewal on the Western model.

DETROIT -- President Bush, in emphasizing private ove public investment in the latest packaging of his economic recovery proposals before the Economic Club of Detroit, was clearly preaching to the choir. Still, the high-powered Michigan businessmen, including major auto manufacturing tycoons, responded rather mildly to the sermon. They had heard it several times before, though in dribs and drabs over the last year.That, in fact, was the problem, as a senior administration official (name withheld under White House rules)

The epitaph for the Rodney King episode is likely to be the old adage: ''After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.''That doesn't have to be. We can overcome our national paralysis and dramatically reduce urban underclass poverty. But it won't be easy, cheap or fast. It must be vastly different from what we've tried in the past and what are now hearing.Last week's hurry-up bipartisan accord on enterprise zones, tenant ownership of public housing and a trickle of extra dollars is an election-year cover-up for policy bankruptcy and political fright.