NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton’s Rough Start May Warn of Bumps Ahead

WASHINGTON — William Jefferson Clinton’s first full week in office, marred as it was by ill-timed confrontations, carried an unmistakable message for the rest of his term: The new President and his team must tighten their grip or risk disaster.

First with Zoe Baird, then with homosexuals in the military, President Clinton lost control of issues that had nothing to do with the principal reasons he was elected. Neither may inflict lasting damage, supporters and critics agree.

But they show a President embarrassingly unprepared for battle even as he struggles to finish proposals for expanding the economy, reforming health care, curbing entitlements and cutting the deficit--issues on which he will encounter far more powerful and entrenched interest groups than he has faced so far.

By some measures, Clinton was lucky the problems came on matters of only peripheral concern to most voters.

What weaknesses has his first week exposed, and what must Clinton do?

First, it showed that even if his plans are not yet finished, the President must project an image of action that focuses attention on the issues he considers essential, so that lesser controversies cannot seize the spotlight or inflict debilitating wounds on his Administration.

Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981 with a few simple but broadly appealing ideas--cutting taxes, freezing federal regulations, expanding the military. Many of the specifics were some time in coming, but he immediately dominated the national debate, established his leadership and cowed friend and foe in Congress.

But with Clinton’s program still a work in progress and the White House saying little, “there’s a vacuum,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist think tank associated with Clinton. “Congress and the country still do not know the size and shape and nature of the Clinton agenda. Until that happens, people can get distracted on other issues.”

Second, Clinton and his staff must do the unglamorous but essential work of preparing for battle. Scouting potential enemies and taking steps to neutralize them should be routine, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s headlong charge against Clinton’s position on gays in the military caught the White House unprepared. So did the public attack by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

The political radar that was the envy of his rivals in the ’92 campaign must be reactivated: The Clinton White House--like much of the rest of the Washington Establishment--failed to foresee the strength of middle class voters’ reaction against Zoe Baird’s hiring of illegal immigrants and her failure to pay their Social Security taxes until after she was nominated.

The result was an awkward retreat on a Cabinet selection. But similar failures to anticipate voters’ feelings could be full-blown disasters when it comes to deciding the details of a health care program that will intimately affect millions of lives.

Perhaps most important, Washington experts say, Clinton must use the power and authority of his office--and his popular support--to make potential opponents think twice before taking him on.

“No one fears this White House,” said an aide to a prominent Senate Democrat. “They like Bill Clinton, they respect him, they want to work with him, but they don’t fear him. The real lesson of the first week is that if he does not instill the fear, lots of things like this will happen.”

Other Presidents have taken to heart Niccolo Machiavelli’s 16th-Century maxim that it is more important for a ruler to be feared than loved.

Ronald Reagan enacted his program by making opponents fear he would go to the voters--perhaps even campaign against them--if they did not go along. Lyndon B. Johnson, a master of political pressure, threatened to cut out federal projects--even withdraw post offices--if legislators didn’t follow his lead.

After Nunn proved that he could push Clinton to a compromise, the President may need to do more to prove he is to be feared as well. “He’s presented himself as someone who can be rolled and that’s not a good thing,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist and an expert on Congress.

In the fight ahead, Clinton’s best strategy may be to try to seize the agenda by concentrating attention on what he is doing, day by day, to solve the issues immediately ahead of him. As his policy blueprints move toward completion, he must demonstrate to the public that these issues and not peripheral ones are occupying his time.

This is precisely what he tried to do in his first days--with a spectacular lack of success.

Clinton had Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen float a trial balloon about a general energy tax, and posed with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to illustrate his focus on the economy. He also met for 75 minutes Tuesday with top congressional leaders--and spent less than 25 seconds talking about gays in the military.

But as the the week dragged on and Clinton failed to reach agreement with top congressional leaders on the gays issue, the headlines were dominated by that question instead of the economy. Clinton insisted that the issue was not distracting him, but late in the week his top spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, acknowledged to reporters: “To the extent that it (the gay issue) takes all of your time and attention away from the economy, I think that’s not too good.”

White House officials asserted they had no choice but to tackle the issue immediately because of pending court cases and what they said were the intentions of congressional Republicans to force an early vote. In any event, they said, theirs was the wisest course because it would resolve the issue in the early innings of Clinton’s Administration.

Many outsiders found this contention baffling.

They wondered why Clinton couldn’t have put off the issue by, for example, immediately announcing that he planned to honor his commitment, but study its implementation for six or nine months. The breathing room would have given him time to begin compiling a record of achievements on issues that matter most to voters.

At the very least, some said, Clinton could have muted the public outcry by bundling the gays announcement with the executive orders issued Jan. 22 that dealt with abortion rights.

“This was a bit of a self-inflicted wound,” said Greg Schneiders, a Washington pollster who worked in the Jimmy Carter White House.

Carter, he recalled, prompted an outcry when he issued an amnesty for draft evaders the day after his inauguration. “They shouldn’t do what we did--there’s just no reason to take one of your most controversial policies and throw it out on one of your first days in office,” Schneiders said.

White House aides said that they have been unfairly accused of failing to consult congressional and military leaders early enough on the issue. Clinton discussed it with Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as early as his first trip to Washington. John Holum, Clinton’s point man on the issue, had something like 40 meetings on it, aides say.

Perhaps Clinton’s team did touch base as often as they say. But in future fights, these contacts will need to be more effective in neutralizing the opposition.

One seeming miscue was a decision to allow Secretary of Defense Les Aspin to appear on television Jan. 24. The appearance forced Aspin to take questions on Clinton’s intentions regarding the gay ban and immediately inflamed relations with the touchy Sen. Nunn.

“They lost the kind of control and focus they were so good at during the campaign,” said William Kristol, a Republican strategist and Vice President Dan Quayle’s former chief of staff.

Marshall, of the Progressive Policy Institute, is among those who believe that the distractions of the first week will be forgotten as soon as Clinton announces the outline of his economic plan Feb. 17. But he acknowledged that the week’s events could “probably” have been better handled.

“Obviously, a lot more consultation with key players like Nunn” would have helped, he said.

Clinton’s advisers said that he should be given more credit for turning the debate his way. Paul Begala, a top Clinton political adviser, argued that the President quickly defused the Baird issue by accepting responsibility for the misjudgment that kept her in contention for the attorney general’s job despite her violation of immigration laws.

And Clinton’s decision to continue sending back Haitian emigrants brought an outcry that the President had repudiated a campaign promise, but it averted prolonged publicity about an influx of Haitians, Begala argued.

“From the political point of view he handled the Baird question perfectly,” Begala said. “On Haiti, the President took decisive action and everything people were predicting didn’t happen. And he’s gotten no credit.”

If Clinton’s errors have been exaggerated, analysts said, there are several mistakes he cannot repeat as he moves into the defining battles of his presidency. He cannot afford to be cornered again on social issues such as the two raised in the last week.

And with the world’s attention focused on the economic plan he has said he will unveil Feb.17, Clinton cannot afford to let his timetable slip further.

“When he puts his economic and health care plans on the table, that’s when the issue becomes substance, instead of ‘Is he ready for this job?’ and ‘Can he govern?’ ” said pollster Schneiders.