Clinton, Bush Discuss Foreign Policy Issues : Politics: Oval Office talk lasts nearly two hours. ‘Americans should be very pleased,’ President-elect says.

President-elect Bill Clinton, relaxed and self-assured in a triumphal arrival in the nation’s capital, spent nearly two hours in a private Oval Office meeting with President Bush on Wednesday discussing major foreign policy problems the new Administration will inherit in January.

“The American people should be very pleased,” Clinton told reporters after the session, the first between the two leaders since the election. “He was very candid. He gave me a lot of insights,” the President-elect said of Bush. Both parties described the discussion as friendly and productive.

But the importance of Clinton’s carefully designed schedule, which included a tour of a black commercial district struggling with urban ills, lay not so much in the substance of the events as in their symbolism--and the insight they offered into the personal touch with which he intends to guide the nation.

As he began to sample the power and prestige of his new office, Clinton projected the appearance of a man already at home, walking shoulder-to-shoulder into the Oval Office with Bush and later strolling a thronged block in northwest Washington lined with small, struggling black-owned businesses.

Similarly, Hillary Clinton seemed at ease in her first major public appearance since the election, outlining an expansive agenda for increasing attention to the nation’s children in a speech Wednesday night to the annual dinner of the Children’s Defense Fund--a high-profile liberal advocacy group whose board of directors she used to chair.

From the moment President Bush walked alone down a Rose Garden pathway to greet his successor, it was apparent that the transfer of leadership from one team to another, while in name still two months away, was already well under way.

As Bush paused on a portico to tell reporters that neither leader would take questions, Clinton nodded with an amiable half-smile. Twenty-nine years after he first visited the Rose Garden as a teenager, he allowed himself to be ushered inside through flung-open glass doors for the one hour and 45 minutes of conversations.

But later, as the meeting ended, it was Bush who remained closeted in the White House and Clinton who emerged to give his assessment of the event.

In the hour that followed, as Clinton strolled along a section of Georgia Avenue to talk with shopkeepers and wade into cheering crowds while wearing a cordless microphone to allow others to eavesdrop, he made a powerful impression upon the city that will soon be his home.

Among the hundreds of residents who grabbed Clinton’s hand and offered advice, one woman begged him not to permit “a whole young generation of young black boys (to) end up on the streets or in prison.”

“That’s why I’m here today,” Clinton told her hoarsely. “I wanted to send a message.”

During the day Clinton also dispatched aides to discuss terms of the transition with White House officials, and in the evening his wife, Hillary, made her first high-profile public appearance since becoming the next First Lady.

Aides to both parties said the Roosevelt Room meeting between the representatives of Clinton and Bush made progress toward establishing a plan to negotiate the many hurdles that still lie ahead in shifting control of the government from one party to another.

During the day, which began in Little Rock, Ark., and ended with a private dinner at the home of transition chairman Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Clinton exuded relaxed confidence.

Thanks to a padded schedule, the Arkansas governor found himself in the skies above Washington about 20 minutes early. His chartered plane, Express One, circled National Airport to kill time.

Clinton could be seen throughout the flight talking easily with top aides, some of whom confided that they had never visited the White House. His motorcade glided up a South Lawn driveway almost precisely on time, shortly after 1 p.m., and as Bush made his way toward the car, Clinton strode forward to take his outstretched hand.

The outgoing President appeared at ease as he ushered his successor forward, pausing with him once behind a bush to whisper.

They both paused again on the portico for photographers, and while Clinton’s eyes darted to the waiting press corps, both seemed eager to head inside and begin their conversations.

“We’ve just decided there’ll be no questions here,” Bush said quietly as the questions began. As Clinton nodded, Bush said the two had decided “we didn’t want to get into a full-scale press conference.”

The Oval Office meeting was interrupted at one point when Bush and Clinton crossed the hall to visit the aides who were holding their parallel session in the Roosevelt Room.

Later, the two camps were both enthusiastic in describing the meeting. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Bush had encouraged the teams to work toward a “smooth transition,” and described the talks between the two former rivals as “warm and informative.”

Clinton called the meeting “terrific.”

Their accounts nevertheless remained vague, and aides to both camps said they would almost certainly remain so. In describing their survey of U.S. policy in “more than a dozen actual and potential trouble spots around the world,” Clinton specifically mentioned only Russia and the former Soviet republics, the Middle East, Bosnia, and Somalia.

It appeared that domestic issues had been given secondary focus in the conversation, although Clinton did express satisfaction at an apparent assurance from Bush that the federal government would clarify rules for Medicaid reimbursement, whose current situation has left state governments uneasy.

In hurrying north to the capital’s Petworth neighborhood, Clinton made a symbolic pilgrimage to a black-dominated area that has long felt ignored by the federal government and by its presidents.

As he engaged scores of shopkeepers and residents in conversation, and clasped hundreds of hands, Clinton borrowed from the tactics of his successful campaign--promising anew that even as President he would “not stay out of touch” with voters.

He pledged his support for urban redevelopment programs that might breathe new life into the neighborhood, and was clearly delighted by the shouted advice and support he heard up and down the crowded block.

“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he said again and again.

In the evening, the Clintons attended a charity dinner hosted by the Children’s Defense Fund, the prominent public-policy advocacy group that Hillary Clinton chaired until earlier this year.

Clinton worked his way through the crowd of roughly 900, many of whom have long been friends of the couple, before moving on to the private dinner at Jordan’s home, which is in one of Washington’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

After the President-elect departed, Hillary Clinton spoke briefly to the group in an address covered live on CNN. She outlined an expansive agenda for increasing attention to the nation’s children, but cautiously avoided specific comment on policies necessary to achieve that goal.

Although the speech served as a Washington debut for the incoming First Lady, aides said she intended to maintain a low profile until at least Inauguration Day, and would grant no press interviews during that time.

Clinton’s visit to Washington attracted crowds even outside his hotel across Lafayette Park from the White House, with some enterprising job-seekers holding placards advertising their services. But if the incoming team attracted little hostility, the White House visit exposed still smoldering frictions.

Once Bush and Clinton were out of sight, White House aides became increasingly exasperated as they tried to shoo the President-elect’s entourage back inside from the Rose Garden, which is reserved for ceremonial occasions.

With Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers holding forth in a covered outdoor corridor for a large group of reporters, Laura Parham, a press aide to Bush, hurried past with a sour expression on her face.

“You know,” she said to no one in particular, “we don’t do press conferences in the colonnade.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.