Zoe Baird

After a ferocious first fortnight, President Clinton has recaptured control of the national agenda and is trying, with mixed success, to bend it to his will. Zoe Baird is forgotten and gays-in-the-military is an issue put off until a later day. The politician who won the White House running as a suburban populist is back, focusing attention on such economic issues as welfare reform, deficit reduction and family emergency leave.Even outside forces conspired to make this past week a good one for the president.

Perhaps never in American history has a brand new administration taken so quick a rabbit punch: the forced withdrawal of Zoe Baird as attorney general at the end of President Clinton's first full day in office. Mr. Clinton took "full responsibility" for the failure of his transition team to realize the full implications of having an admitted scofflaw as the nation's top law-enforcement officer. He is a politician adept at cutting his losses, of bouncing back from bad situations, and he will need all his talents to handle this one.If it is any comfort for the new president, he at least shed the Baird imbroglio early on, thus avoiding a protracted Senate confirmation battle that would have distracted public attention from more pressing priorities.

WASHINGTON -- Zoe Baird, Bill Clinton's nominee to be attorney general, employed two Peruvians living illegally in the United States as her baby sitter and part-time driver for nearly two years, government and Clinton transition officials said yesterday.Transition officials said the couple began working for Ms. Baird in the summer of 1990, when she was about to take a job at Aetna Life and Casualty in Hartford, Conn. The husband stopped working for Ms. Baird in March 1992, but the wife continued to help care for her 3-year-old son until the woman left or was dismissed shortly after the election.

To the list of such "isms" as racism, sexism and ageism, let us now add another: Call it singleism.Which is to say: bias against those who never marry in a society that considers marriage the "norm."Divorced people do not fit into this category since, even though they have "failed" at marriage, they still have done the "normal" thing.Young bachelors and bachelorettes do not fit into this category because it is presumed that once having sown their wild oats they will marry and settle down.

Women across the country reacted with immense frustration yesterday at what they perceived as a growing double standard for men and women being considered for the Clinton Cabinet.Many said they understood and agreed with President Clinton's decision to withdraw his support of his first choice for attorney general, Zoe Baird, after it was learned that she had broken the law by employing an illegal alien. But they said they were astounded that U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood of New York, a strong candidate who had not violated the law, should also be forced out of competition because of similar questions about whom she hired to take care of her child.

NOW we'll find out how smart he really is.There once were fancy rhapsodies -- some written here -- about Bill Clinton's political deftness, the way he connects with people, his savvy on issues.Watching him campaign, I thought he was one of the best natural politicians I'd ever seen. Even now, a CNN poll shows 72 percent like Mr. Clinton for his "intelligence."OK, if he's so bright, how'd the president stumble immediately into so many bear traps? Is he already crippled? Can he dig himself out of the hole?

Rarely does a TV show get canceled at the height of its popularity. But that's what happened last week when the White House pulled the plug on its daily press briefings."

WASHINGTON -- Corporate lawyer Zoe Baird's nomination to be U.S. attorney general slipped into deepening trouble last night, threatening a painfully embarrassing defeat for President Clinton in his first few days in office.As a second day of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee wore on yesterday amid a rising public outcry, behind-the-scenes maneuvering pointed toward an effort to scuttle the nomination because Ms. Baird and her husband had broken the law in hiring two illegal aliens to be a baby sitter and a driver.

Baltimore lawyer Edward N. Leavy can relate to Zoe Baird, and he says many other working couples can, too.Mr. Leavy, an immigration specialist with the law firm Weinberg & Green, says he once spent 2 1/2 years haggling with U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to gain legal status for his Salvadoran housekeeper.Many young families employ illegal aliens as housekeepers and nannies in violation of U.S. immigration laws -- often, he says, because it takes as many as eight years for the aliens to get permanent visas that make them legal residents.

Los Angeles. -- President Clinton's vow to put together a Cabinet that looked like America has not quite worked out, at least by my calculations. With 14 lawyers in 17 Cabinet-level positions, that would work out to around 205 million lawyers in the general population.That's a bit high, I think, though sometimes it seems that way. There are, in fact, more than 800,000 attorneys in the United States, including the president and his wife, who actually met each other in one of the great cathedrals of the profession, the library at Yale Law School.