Clinton Working to Build Consensus on Policy Ideas : Transition: Aides say he will confer with Congress on key issues, fill Cabinet posts before developing agenda.

In a new sign that President-elect Bill Clinton plans to focus his first 100 days in office on a few key priorities, top officials in his transition team intend to minimize the development of detailed policy proposals on most issues until his senior Cabinet officials are appointed, sources say.

Though the transition team could begin preliminary analysis sooner, the decision to include the Cabinet officers in a significant role may push back the completion of final legislative proposals on many of the dozens of areas Clinton addressed during the campaign.

That prospect risks disappointing many interest groups eager to push various agendas at a time when Clinton raised expectations for change to new levels.

But most aides are urging a broader strategy on the governor: to focus his legislative efforts during his first months on building consensus on a few central issues, with an economic recovery package and health care reform topping most lists.

Some aides still prefer a faster pace on the broad range of concerns. All sides in the internal debate, however, agree that work must be expedited in at least one area: the development of a budget and an economic stimulus plan.

Clinton is also laying plans to begin building momentum for his short list of key proposals even before he takes office. In the next few days, he will create a legislative strategy group in Washington to begin systematically incorporating congressional sentiment into the development of his policy agenda, sources say.

Clinton also will meet with Democratic congressional leaders in Little Rock on Sunday, is contemplating another meeting with legislative leaders in Washington late next week, has announced plans to gather business and labor leaders next month for an economic summit, and may convene what one adviser termed “consensus-building sessions” on other top priority issues such as health care.

These efforts to streamline his agenda and aggressively pre-sell it point toward a distinctive style of policy development for the incoming Clinton Administration. Some around him believe that Clinton intends to integrate the legislative outreach and policy development process rather than craft his policies behind closed doors and then try to marshal support for them.

“What did we learn from Vietnam? We learned you don’t go to war unless you have a consensus in the society,” said one senior Clinton aide. “Obviously this isn’t a war but these are serious times. And the only way you can achieve what you’re going to achieve is by bringing people in on the front end and building public consensus as you develop policy. . . . At its best, it is a very organic process.”

Another close adviser predicted: “This guy is not going to be sending up budgets dead on arrival. We haven’t seen a White House since Lyndon Johnson that has worked Congress on such a day-by-day basis, massaging egos and twisting arms.”

The pending appointment of a legislative strategy group for the transition could foreshadow a decision to revive the White House-based legislative group that controlled congressional and communications strategy in the early years of the Ronald Reagan Administration, some Clinton advisers hope. “It certainly was successful for Reagan,” the senior Clinton aide said.

Senior Clinton transition aides have concluded it would be essential to involve the new appointees in the process of converting Clinton’s campaign proposals into legislation, rather than trying to present them with a fait accompli.

“It is going to wait until the appointments are made because the people who are going to implement these ideas have to feel some ownership of them,” said one close adviser.

Those appointments are not expected for several weeks and are likely to be made in broad “clusters,” with an overall economic or foreign policy team chosen together in an effort to minimize interagency friction. The cluster of appointments will then be announced all at once, sources indicate.

In the next few days, Clinton is expected to establish teams to review agencies and departments across the government. But while these groups--whose responsibilities are expected to be divided into broad functional areas such as economic policy--may do some policy spade work, sources say the groups will concentrate primarily on technical activities: reviewing operations at the agencies, serving as liaison with the transition coordinators from the career staff, helping in the personnel search, and preparing lists for the incoming officials of statutory obligations and other decisions they will face in their first weeks in office.

“Clinton doesn’t want to get too far out in front of major policy decisions before he has the team that will implement those decisions,” said one source who has discussed the transition process with him. “You don’t want a lot of people doing policy during the transition because then they feel appointed.”

Although Clinton offered perhaps the most detailed policy agenda of any presidential candidate in recent memory, complex questions remain to be resolved on many issues.

For example, he has not specified how slots in his national service program would be allocated if funds are not sufficient to cover all young people who want to serve in return for college aid. On some questions, he has merely articulated goals without describing the paths to reaching them--such as limiting U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

“He is starting with a clear sense of direction about what he wants to accomplish,” said business consultant Ira C. Magaziner, one of Clinton’s top economic advisers. “But there are a thousand and one decisions to make.”

But others in the Clinton camp believe it would be preferable to put off the untangling of the details on secondary issues until Congress has digested his core economic package. Accordingly, they are urging Clinton to appoint commissions or task forces on such questions as national service after he takes office, rather than trying to iron out the details during the transition.

That approach would serve the dual purpose of conveying movement on those ideas, but pushing back the introduction of actual legislation to implement them.

“What we’ve learned from (Jimmy) Carter’s experience,” said one adviser urging this course, “is you can’t do all of these different things at once. You only have so much political capital.”

To create a sense of political momentum without introducing a flurry of expensive legislation, advisers in this camp have prepared for Clinton a list of dozens of high-profile policy actions he can take upon entering the White House that do not cost money.

Among them: signing the family leave and voter registration reform acts vetoed twice by President Bush, promulgating new ethics guidelines, agreeing with Congress on campaign reform legislation, and rescinding Bush’s order prohibiting physicians at federally funded clinics from discussing abortion with patients--the so-called gag rule.

On Wednesday, Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos also reiterated the President-elect’s intention to lift the order barring homosexuals from serving in the military.