TRANSITION WATCH

THEY’LL CROSS THAT BRIDGE: As if President-elect Bill Clinton didn’t have enough symbolic acts lined up for inauguration week, his people are working on at least one more. Reportedly, this is the tentative plan: When their bus reaches Arlington Cemetery from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home, Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore will get out and walk across the Potomac River on Memorial Bridge. At the Lincoln Memorial they will ring a replica of the Liberty Bell, kicking off a “reunion” concert on the Washington Mall. This is all on the Sunday before the Jan. 20 swearing-in at the Capitol and a White House reception open to the public. . . . Joyce Kravitz, press secretary for the Presidential Inaugural Committee, reluctantly concedes that a walk-and-ring “may be one thing being discussed.” The group cobbling up the hush-hush plan is dubbed “Bells and Bridges.”

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TRENDY: Are Clinton and Gore the “embodiment of the boomer generation?” Are Bill and spouse, Hillary, to the baby boom generation what “Ozzie and Harriet were to the World War II generation?” Will hope really be “in” in 1993 and despair “out”? Yes, yes, yes, says something called the Trends Journal, which caters to forward-looking marketers on behalf of the Trends Research Institute of Rhinebeck, N.Y. The journal strongly advises subscribers to “tie in the baby boomer mentality through Clinton” by taking “the timeless, basic social, political and economic elements of the generation and reformulate them to reflect the mood-attitude perceptions of 1993 society.” . . . As Ross Perot might say, it’s just that simple.

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BOOMER BILL, PART II: We know Clinton plays golf, including once when he wished he hadn’t--at the whites-only Country Club of Little Rock, Ark., during the presidential campaign. But how good is his swing? It can now be told. “If he had a handicap, it’d be 14 or 15” over par, confides Little Rock lawyer Webb Hubbell, a frequent golfing partner of the President-elect. “But,” adds another companion, banker-lobbyist Paul Berry, “when he has time to play, he can shoot low 80s on you.” And take your money: He likes to wager $3 on an 18-hole round, good-humoredly needling opponents into errors. . . . Wielding a new king-size driver, the husky Clinton takes a big windup and booms ‘em off the tee, often for a Nicklausian 260 yards--although some balls fade into the rough. He can nail a 7-iron from 150 yards and be deadly on short putts--but has trouble reading the long ones. . . . He brags shamelessly about a 2-iron shot he once hit off a root under a low-hanging tree. It zoomed 210 yards into the par-4 hole for an eagle 2. . . . “He’s always a threat and doesn’t know much fear,” Berry says. “When he gets hot, he can scratch it” (shoot par). . . . One thing Clinton doesn’t do is race around the course as if he were a stock-car driver--or President Bush. “He concentrates a lot,” Hubbell says.

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SWEET HART SUITES: Normally, new senators get the worst pick of office space. But not Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California. They are getting two of the largest suites on Capitol Hill. . . . It’s because of harmony between departing Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and former Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.). Earlier this year, they persuaded the Senate Rules Committee to give California permanent big digs in the glitzy Hart Building. The reason: The state’s preeminent size entitles each senator to hire about 60 aides, twice as many as Nevada.