Clinton to Seek Bush Views on Foreign, U.S. Troubles : White House: Aides to the two will meet on details of the transfer of power. President-elect also names personnel director for his Administration.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. —  President-elect Bill Clinton arrives in Washington today to begin an American political ritual as he meets face to face with President Bush, the defeated leader he will soon supplant in the White House.

In an hourlong meeting in the Oval Office, Clinton and Bush are expected to play roles as old as democracy as the outgoing President offers the successor his view about the state of the nation and the two men try to swallow any lingering bitterness from a combative campaign.

Clinton made clear on Tuesday that he intends to urge Bush to provide a candid assessment of the problems he will face at home and abroad when he takes office in just 63 days.

Elsewhere in the White House, top lieutenants to the two leaders will also meet to negotiate details as the Clinton team prepares to remake the government in its own image.

In a major step in the transition operation, Clinton named former South Carolina Gov. Richard W. Riley on Tuesday to oversee the vast task of filling out the new Administration’s team with as many as 4,000 appointees to high-level federal jobs.

At a news conference in Little Rock, the director of the transition team, Warren Christopher, said Riley would work closely with as-yet-unappointed Cabinet members to fill the ranks beneath them with officials best equipped to carry out Clinton’s agenda.

As Clinton prepared to fly to Washington aboard a chartered jet and to stay overnight in a private hotel, his aides said they will need to solicit private contributions to supplement the $3.5 million set aside by the government for transition expenses.

Previous presidents-elect have found taxpayer funds insufficient to meet the enormous costs of organizing a new government. Clinton chose not to travel aboard an Air Force jet or stay in the government’s Blair House in part because of the high costs involved, the aides said.

“We’re trying to cut corners wherever we can,” said Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s transition press secretary, describing the new fund-raising effort as “a bare necessity.”

The lower-frills travel seems likely to inject a somewhat informal air into the incoming President’s visit to his new home, as does a planned afternoon walk down a main avenue of the capital’s depressed black neighborhoods.

In nearly two hours of informal chats with businessmen along the city’s Georgia Avenue, Clinton hopes to demonstrate his commitment to urban renewal and “see a different part of Washington” from the prosperous streets near the White House, Myers said.

During the two-day trip to Washington, Clinton’s first since winning election, the President-elect also is to attend a pair of dinner parties hosted by leading Democratic social figures.

The gatherings at the homes of Vernon E. Jordan Jr., chairman of Clinton’s transition board, and Pamela Harriman, a doyenne of the party’s financial and social circles, will include senators, congressmen, members of the news media and others. The affairs will take the Clintons to Washington settings rarely visited by recent presidents, who preferred to entertain at the White House.

At a Tuesday afternoon photo session, Clinton, 46, struck a deferential tone as he looked ahead to his meeting with Bush, a man 22 years his senior. He said he intended to ask the President about “one or two things” related to the transition but would be “pretty much at his disposal.”

Aides said they believed that the face-to-face chat would follow a set piece of presidential history, in which the passing of the torch has almost always been preceded by the private sharing of thoughts and advice.

“I think it will not be just a social call,” Christopher said, “but it will be--as has always been true historically--a time when the outgoing President communicates important thoughts to the incoming President.”

The unusually harsh notes of this year’s election campaign provide a somewhat awkward backdrop for the one-on-one session, whose participants just a few weeks ago were essentially calling one another liars.

But Bush and Clinton have made clear that they expect their relationship to be cordial and cooperative, and the President-elect went out of his way Tuesday to reiterate how impressed he had been that the President acted so swiftly to invite him to visit.

Clinton said he particularly looked forward to hearing from Bush about “some problems that I’ll be facing at the beginning of the first term.”

Apart from the President-elect’s publicly announced get-togethers with Bush today and with congressional leaders Thursday, Pentagon officials said Clinton was expected to meet with Gen. Colin C. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at some point during his two-day stay, most likely on Thursday afternoon.

Other central discussions are expected to take place today when Christopher and Jordan meet with Transportation Secretary Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush’s designee as liaison to the Clinton team, to sketch a blueprint for the transition.

The session will determine how quickly the incoming team can gain access to closely held budget and national security information and is to include discussion of the timetables for Clinton designees to begin enmeshing themselves in the affairs of certain departments.

That meeting will also offer the Clinton team the first opportunity to communicate privately its hopes that the Administration would take certain actions before leaving office--because Bush’s room to maneuver on certain issues may be greater than his successor’s.

Already, for example, a Bush Administration official said, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has told Vietnamese officials that they should cooperate quickly on POW/MIA issues because it will be easier for Bush than Clinton to reward them by normalizing relations with Vietnam.

Clinton’s decision to travel to Washington aboard a charter aircraft and stay in the Hay-Adams hotel is unusual for a President-elect. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, suggesting that the choice reflected Democratic stagecraft, told reporters that Clinton staffers had made arrangements earlier for him to use an Air Force plane and stay at Blair House, across the street from the White House, in accordance with custom.

But Clinton aides, who acknowledged discomfort at the need to raise private funds for expenses beyond the $3.5 million provided to them by the government, said the customary pomp would have cost the operation thousands of more dollars than their own campaign-style arrangements.

“There’s no political message here,” Myers said. “We’re just trying to get through the transition.”