TRANSITION WATCH

UNHAPPY RETURNS: President-elect Bill Clinton comes back from his Renaissance Weekend today facing some tough--and potentially divisive--choices over who will get the plum jobs on his own White House staff. . . . A spate of key aides who worked with him during the grueling campaign, all in their early or mid-30s and anxious to make their marks, are angling for top slots but there are only so many to go around--and even less than usual if Clinton sticks to his campaign pledge to keep the White House staff small. Clinton-watchers warn that giving these staff members short shrift could hurt morale right from the start. . . . Among the contenders for top slots: Campaign communications director George Stephanopoulos and political strategists Paul Begala and Mark Gearan. Next week, Clinton is expected to begin announcing key sub-Cabinet appointments--undersecretaries and assistant secretaries.

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TIME FOR A CHANGE: The new Clinton Administration’s biggest immediate impact is expected to be right in the area that the President campaigned against the hardest--inside the Washington Beltway. Longtime Washingtonians are hoping the turnover will spur a recovery in the real estate market, which has fallen on hard times amid the recession and 12 years of one-party incumbency. Cleveland Park and other choice northwest Washington neighborhoods are bracing for an influx--at the expense of the upscale Northern Virginia suburbs, which have been GOP favorites for years. . . . And the city’s posh expense-account restaurants, many of which already were forced to cut back when the recession hit, are settling in for more lean years. Clintonites are expected to patronize less tony looking places--such as McDonald’s.

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BILL WHO? He may have campaigned as just plain Bill, but the soon-to-be 42nd President of the United States plans to take his oath of office in a more formal fashion: The official invitations, recently mailed to thousands of supporters and contributors, invite recipients to “the Inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton.” . . . That puts Clinton in step with his predecessor--who took the oath as George Herbert Walker Bush--but not with the last Democratic President, who passed up the names James and Earl and took the oath simply as Jimmy Carter.

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ENVIRONMENTALLY CORRECT: The Clinton inaugural committee proudly notes in its mailing that “for the first time in history, the entire presidential inaugural invitation package is engraved and printed on recycled paper.”

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HOLIDAY SPIRITS: Arkansas state liquor laws provided an unpleasant surprise for some of the press and staff assigned to Little Rock over the holidays on transition duty. When a group of Clinton-watchers ordered wine to complement an away-from-home Christmas dinner at a restaurant, they were notified that serving of alcohol on that holiday in public establishments was prohibited. . . . After some discussion with the management, a compromise was arranged: The diners could drink their own bottle of champagne at the table, but only if they did so from coffee cups.