COMMENTARY ON THE INCOMING ADMINISTRATION : Onetime White House Insiders Share Benefits of Experience : Clinton, who appears to favor informal chats, should not underestimate the power of a talented team of speech writers.

President-elect Bill Clinton need only hire good writers to ensure success. It’s that simple.

The office of speech writing in the Old Executive Office Building is relatively small, but it matters most.

Clinton can have the smartest staff, the best advisers and top-notch legislative proposals. But if the words aren’t there, nothing else matters.

Economists, lawyers and congressmen may tell you different. But when was the last time someone quoted Winston Churchill’s budget estimates to you, or Frankin D. Roosevelt’s 1938 legislative package? Greatness is in the words. Always has been. Always will be.

In the age of television, Presidents are onstage every day, not just on Inauguration Day. It’s impossible to predict which phrase or speech will end up defining the next four years. The best guarantee of a happy selection is consistently superior writing.

George Bush downgraded the writers’ shop, and so did Ronald Reagan in his second term. But from ’81 to ‘85, the talent was deep. Ben Elliot headed the crew, which included Josh Gilder, Peter Robinson, Peggy Noonan and Dana Rohrabacher.

It was a writers’ shop second only to Richard M. Nixon’s “murderers’ row” of Ray Price, William Safire and Pat Buchanan. Reagan moved from triumph to triumph in his first term. There is a connection.

Clinton strikes me as uncomfortable with the set-piece speech, preferring conversational chats to high-profile rhetoric. Too bad. Bush had the same tendency.

But Americans love the presidential address. They respond to it, and in responding can carry a President’s agenda forward.

Hundreds of academics are deluging the new President with blueprints for this and that. The think tanks are on overtime. Hill leadership is pledged and poised to move quickly.

And it will all be wasted if the words aren’t right.

So let’s hope Clinton recruits a deep bench over in speech writing. And that he then spends the time with his writers that they, and the country, deserve.