President Clinton

PRESIDENT Clinton leaves office with the United States powerful, respected and influential. Military posture has little to do with it. The main reason is the awesome size and stability of the U.S. economy. The secondary reason is world respect for Mr. Clinton's own increasingly sure-handed involvement. Not that everything succeeded. Far from it. Mr. Clinton had ad hoc policies, not a system or a theory. Many world problems that he addressed remain unsettled. Yet the measure of his stature was international reaction to the impeachment crisis: Not Mr. Clinton but his accusers stood indicted in the eyes of ally and adversary.

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton took the Senate's oath of office yesterday, her new colleagues standing to applaud the historic moment as President Clinton wiped tears from his eyes. In a ceremony that never hinted at the strains that afflict this divided Congress - and the hostility many lawmakers feel toward the Clintons - the new senator beamed as she became the only first lady ever to hold elective office and the first one to bump her husband to the sidelines with her own political triumph.

WASHINGTON - President Clinton, invoking what has become a traditional Christmas theme, announced yesterday a series of measures to better integrate the nation's public housing, and help new homebuyers and the homeless. The most sweeping action would require public housing authorities nationwide to examine their housing for income concentration and introduce new residents in a way that would result in greater economic diversity. While the standard is income, the likely effect will be to produce a more racially integrated environment.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has been trying to conduct a farewell tour in the grand manner. One week he is in Vietnam, the next in Nebraska and the next in Northern Ireland. Then it's on to London to see the queen just once more. He is clearly determined to use his office and his public transportation to the fullest and to the very end. Why not make that historic visit to Vietnam? Why not try again in Ireland? It would be a scandal if he missed Nebraska in eight years as a traveling president determined to shake every hand and hear every cheer, so why not make that speech in Kearney?

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - From bringing out his guitar and breaking into song inside an Irish pub to marveling at Belfast's still-rising waterfront development, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley says he's been overwhelmed by his two-day, whirlwind Irish tour with President Clinton. "What strikes you is just how small this island is," O'Malley said yesterday. "You see all the players gathered in one place." On Tuesday, he met poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney in Dublin and a huge crowd that waited for Clinton in Dundalk, even managing to hand out to kids the latest CD of his band, O'Malley's March.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Five years after his first emotion-packed visit to Northern Ireland, President Clinton returns today to the once embattled British province, fueling hopes among local politicians that he can get old foes to settle old scores one final time. Part victory lap and part last chance to burnish his administration's legacy, Clinton's third trip to Belfast comes at an auspicious time in Northern Ireland's peace process. The deal-makers are at loggerheads over the most vexing issues of a 1998 political accord that brought peace and normality to a wind-swept land where majority Protestants and minority Roman Catholics battled over power and history.

Starting this month, it's all on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, from George Washington's military uniform to Bill Clinton's gleaming saxophone, with Abraham Lincoln's black top hat and Dwight D. Eisenhower's golf clubs sandwiched in between. But missing from the comprehensive new exhibit "The American Presidency: a Glorious Burden" is any reference to what's foremost on the minds of museum-goers - will it be Al Gore's running shoes or George W. Bush's cowboy boots that eventually join the show?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - As the presidential candidates publicly battle over who will occupy the Oval Office next year, both camps have quietly begun deciding who will be taking over the rest of the White House and the Executive Branch. In a display of confidence, Texas Gov. George W. Bush has named his running mate, Dick Cheney, as the head of his transition team, but the process of selecting a new Republican team in the White House began in July. Similarly, Vice President Al Gore tapped his old friend and former top aide Roy Neel months ago to begin laying the groundwork for an orderly transition from a Clinton administration to one with a distinctive Gore stamp.

WASHINGTON - On Nov. 1, 1800, John Adams traveled the long road from Philadelphia to the new federal city of Washington, D.C. For the nation's second president, it was moving day. As he stepped out of his carriage and stood before his new home, then known as the presidential palace, he encountered a half-built structure with scaffolding across the basement floors, walls without plaster and only one of the three staircases built. Next month, the White House will celebrate its 200th anniversary.

WASHINGTON - President Clinton was preparing two weeks ago to make what he hoped would be a final push for a broad peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, a capstone on years of arduous negotiations by his administration. These days, Clinton is as absorbed as ever in Middle East problems, but the stakes have changed. Success now is likely to be measured not in grand terms, such as establishment of a Palestinian nation, but in whether Palestinians and Israelis stop trying to kill each other, if only temporarily.