TRANSITION WATCH

THE OUT CROWD: What do Vice President Dan Quayle, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and Budget Director Richard G. Darman have in common? Although often at odds, all three have engaged the same literary agent to shop their memoirs with publishers. Washington lawyer/agent Robert B. Barnett is seeking megabuck contracts for their kiss-and-tells. . . . What are his three clients worth? One publishing source said he doubts that Baker, for one, would fetch anywhere close to the $2-million advance that former Secretary of State George P. Shultz reportedly received to write two books. This source guessed Baker might get $250,000 if the book were restricted to foreign policy but as much as $400,000 if it covered other parts of his odyssey with Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

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THE OUTS, PART II: Departing Defense Secretary Dick Cheney is headed for a conservative Washington-based think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, along with his wife, Lynne, who is retiring as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The post will give Cheney plenty of room to run for President in 1996, which he’s clearly contemplating. . . . White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray plans to start an anti-liberal public affairs network on cable television, along with Dorrance Smith, presidential assistant for media affairs, and Evan Kemp, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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PRAYERFULLY INCLINED: Two evangelical Christian groups are demanding that evangelist Billy Graham “just say no” to giving the invocation and benediction at President-elect Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Praying at the inauguration of the “radically pro-abortion Clinton” will cause “great embarrassment to all evangelicals,” said the Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition and the Christian Action Council of Philadelphia. . . . Graham responded with a press release proudly headlined: “Evangelist Participates in 7th Inauguration--More Than Anyone in 20th Century.” He said that Clinton and his wife, Hillary, “will make a unique team to help lead America and the Western world.”

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BOUND FOR GLORY? Andre Pineda is putting all his eggs in one basket--or, more precisely, he’s tossing his clothes, computer and TV in his 1988 Chevy and driving from South Pasadena to Washington, D.C., in search of a political future. . . . Pineda, 28, worked for the Clinton-Gore campaign in San Diego and hopes to land a job in the new Administration or with one of California’s two new senators. . . . He told college audiences last fall that Clinton’s candidacy was their generation’s equivalent of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. “Are you going to tell your grandkids that you just watched it happen or are you going to be part of it?” he exhorted. Now he says: “This is my chance to be part of it.”

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WAKE-UP CALL: Astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour, due to be launched Jan. 13, are being asked to join in the national bell-ringing celebration planned by Clinton for Jan. 17. Trouble is, the astronauts’ schedule calls for them to be in slumberland, 160 miles above Earth, at the time. But Phil Engelauf, an official at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, solemnly vows to come up with an orbital ding-dong. . . . If NASA doesn’t, could it get its bell rung at budget time?