Foley Predicts Clinton Will Avoid Carter’s Rocky Start With Congress : Politics: Speaker says the President-elect made it clear that he will meet often with Capitol Hill leaders. Input from First Lady also is expected.

Early in Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a White House aide expressed concern that Carter would treat Congress as if it were the Georgia Legislature and Congress would reciprocate by treating him like Georgia’s governor. The fears were realized, resulting in a rocky start for the Carter presidency.

President-elect Bill Clinton will not make that kind of mistake, according to House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), who said in an interview Monday that Clinton was surprised to learn how relatively infrequently Carter met with Democratic congressional leaders.

When the leaders told Clinton last week that Carter met with them at a breakfast session every other Tuesday, Foley said, the Arkansas governor declared: “ ‘What? Once every other week? I meet with the Arkansas Legislature every day!’ ”

It was clear from the congressional leaders’ meeting with Clinton in Little Rock last week, Foley said, that the President-elect will meet with them regularly and frequently and “will be much more energetic about congressional relations than most presidents.”

Carter, who once told a reporter that members of Congress wasted his time because he knew more about the issues than they did, had an especially rough first year on Capitol Hill after taking office in January, 1977. But Foley expressed optimism about Clinton’s prospects.

“In a sense, Carter analogized Congress to the Georgia Legislature, and he didn’t have a happy relationship with the Legislature,” Foley said. “Clinton won’t do that; he’s realistic about relations with Congress. I’m optimistic. I expect him to have small meetings at the White House with members, the way (President John F.) Kennedy did.”

In a wide-ranging interview with reporters at a luncheon session, the Speaker also said that Clinton’s wife, Hillary, will play a key advisory role in the Administration and will be welcomed by Democratic congressional leaders at their sessions with the President.

Foley said he was “very comfortable” with Mrs. Clinton’s participation at last week’s leadership discussion in Little Rock. He echoed Gov. Clinton’s remark that she knew more about some of the issues than did other participants and said that her legal and political comments resolved one of the key issues raised at the meeting.

A lawyer highly respected in legal circles and a political activist who has worked on children’s causes and other major issues, Hillary Clinton has been a close adviser to her husband during his 12 years as Arkansas governor. Foley said that at the Little Rock meeting she spoke “with authority, knowledge and persuasiveness, and showed very good judgment.”

While he expects her to have “a very positive influence” on the Clinton Administration, Foley said that, like most first ladies, she is likely to be the target of frequent criticism. Over the years, first ladies have been criticized alternately for being either too outspoken or too aloof, too dominant or too reticent, involved in too many causes or too few.

“She’ll be criticized whatever she does and will have to accept it,” Foley said. Rosalynn Carter was widely criticized after she attended several Cabinet meetings at which she took notes. A Clinton adviser, who declined to be identified, said: “That’s the least of what Hillary will be doing. She’ll be involved in policy and personnel, and she’ll play a role in all the top appointments--and that will go below the level of Cabinet members.”

Although Foley praised Carter for some of his accomplishments as President, he made it clear that he believes the Arkansas governor will be a much better political operative in Washington.

Carter’s relations with members of Congress were never very warm, and he was not known as a president who enjoyed spending time with them. Nor was he particularly tolerant or understanding of differing opinions, whether from members of Congress or other political figures.

Foley said that the party’s congressional leaders found Clinton “very warm and engaging, actively wanting close contact with people in Congress.”

“He seems to like to have their advice,” Foley said, adding that he believes Clinton was sincere recently when he expressed no offense that Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) disagreed with his plan to lift the ban on gays in the military.

Clinton “is not offended by disagreement,” Foley said, and the President-elect told the congressional leaders: “Presidents have gotten into trouble in the past by having people tell them everything is doing fine when it isn’t.”

At a closed-door session in Washington last week, Foley said, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell “told Clinton . . . that when he disagreed with him he would tell him” but that he would comply with any presidential decision.

On other issues, Foley said that:

* Like Clinton, he would not rule out an economic program that would produce a short-term increase in the deficit if it stimulated the economy.

* Congress eventually will pass legislation to grant statehood to the District of Columbia, a measure endorsed by Clinton and pressed by the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. The issue is likely to be debated for many months, however, and it will be hotly contested by Republican senators. It may not pass this year.

* Several bills vetoed by President Bush will be on the agenda early, including family and medical leave, “motor-voter” registration and campaign finance law revision, “probably in that order.”

* Congress, frustrated by its inability in recent years to come to grips with major problems, is in for an “exciting time,” with Republicans as well as Democrats eager to work toward legislative solutions.

* Legislation to control health care costs will be passed in the first year but probably will take longer to implement. It is “ludicrous” to think such legislation could be enacted in the first 100 days of the session, he said.