Swift Action on Baird Seen as Cutting Political Losses

Night had long since come and a cold dreary rain was falling on Washington as Zoe Baird, her husband and their closest advisers gathered Thursday night to decide what to do about her embattled nomination for attorney general.

The day before, Baird had wondered about pulling out, only to receive assurances from President Clinton and his aides that she could prevail, according to accounts of events of the last several days provided by White House officials and sources close to Baird and other players in the process. But Thursday afternoon, as Senate support began crumbling, White House spokesmen had sent unmistakable public signals of a loss of confidence in the nomination.

All day in her public testimony, Baird had flatly asserted that she would not pull out and still believed she could be a “great” attorney general. But shortly after the hearing ended, as she walked into the office of Lloyd Cutler, a prominent Washington attorney and former White House counsel, her words were very different.

The hearings, she told her advisers, were not going well. Perhaps the time had come to quit.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who had been Baird’s mentor and as director of Clinton’s transition had been her chief sponsor for the nomination, gave the answer.

“Yes,” he reportedly said, “it probably would be best to pull out.”

A few blocks away, President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, were wrapping up a reception for longtime friends in the White House state dining room. Clinton’s top aides and outside advisers were huddled in the West Wing office of Communications Director George Stephanopoulos. As they waited, Christopher, who had been in touch with White House officials earlier in the day, telephoned Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty. Baird, he said, would be sending a letter shortly. The wait was over.

For Clinton’s aides, the news put an end to an embarrassing public relations disaster. That swift end exemplified what has become a hallmark of the Clinton style--quick response, a willingness to cut losses and move on, even at the cost of being accused of abandoning a fight.

That style stands in sharp contrast to the response that then-President George Bush made four years ago when his nominee to head the Pentagon, John Tower, came under attack. Bush and his aides encouraged Tower to fight to the bitter end, guaranteeing an end that was, indeed bitter. The loss soured Bush’s relations with Capitol Hill early in his Administration and handed him a major defeat.

By resolving the Baird controversy quickly, Clinton probably has minimized the political damage the nomination could cause his Administration, political observers said Friday. In particular, said one Democratic strategist with close Senate ties, “a lot of people in the Senate are relieved” and grateful that Clinton spared them from having to vote on the controversy.

But the case does raise some lasting questions, particularly about why a White House team that prides itself on its keen grasp of how average Americans perceive their situation and the world around them failed to understand how seriously the public would react to Baird’s conduct in hiring illegal immigrants and failing to pay Social Security taxes for them.

Women’s rights organizations said Friday that they were not called upon to lend support to Baird’s faltering nomination until the last minute because the new Administration had been caught off guard.

“None of us predicted the kind of public reaction” Baird’s conduct would cause, one Clinton adviser said. “We’d never been through it before.” In the minds of some transition officials, a White House official said, Baird’s actions seemed more on par with a traffic violation than with a disqualifying offense.

In that manner, Baird’s nomination stands as another example of an increasingly common phenomenon. In cases as diverse as the 1991 congressional pay raise, the House bank scandal and Anita Faye Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Washington officialdom has seemed isolated and slow to recognize the impact that charges of official misconduct have among the majority of Americans.

The problem for Clinton is that he based his campaign to a large extent on the assertion that he was different, that he was not a part of the “Washington Establishment” and that he would run the government according to the values of the average American who “plays by the rules.”

For those reasons, Clinton aides say, the Baird controversy could have posed a serious threat to Clinton’s standing. And aides continue to debate how the problem started in the first place.

The official answer from Clinton is that he did not know the full scope of Baird’s legal violations at the time he announced her nomination. Those assertions, however, contradict statements made earlier this month by Clinton aides, who said when Baird’s actions first came to light that Clinton had known the details of Baird’s conduct and believed the problem was not serious.

Speaking to reporters at a ceremony Friday in which he signed several executive orders, Clinton said he took full responsibility for the nomination and blamed part of the problem on haste. “As you know, we were trying to make a Christmas deadline (to name Cabinet appointees), which is probably my error, again on this,” he said. “In retrospect, what I should have done is to basically delay the whole thing for a couple of days and look into it in greater depth.”

At the time, Clinton said, he was somewhat distracted. “I have to tell you that during the course of these inquiries (into backgrounds of Cabinet prospects), I received other weightier warnings, if you will, of things which had to be worked through with other potential nominees.”

Clinton said the first he heard of Baird’s hiring of the Peruvian couple came “just before she was announced but after I had discussed the appointment with her, I was told that this matter had come up.”

And he asserted that while he knew that “an error had been made in the hiring of illegal aliens,” no one had mentioned to him Baird’s failure to pay Social Security taxes. “Nobody said anything to me about the taxes,” he said.

The “conclusion was it would be no problem,” Clinton said.

Even some White House officials expressed a degree of skepticism about Clinton’s account. “No one really knows what was in his mind, what he knew,” said one official, noting that the briefings Clinton received were oral, not written.

And the failure of transition aides--and perhaps of Clinton--to recognize the depth of the political problem surrounding Baird has sparked sometimes bitter comments by some Clinton advisers.

“This is what happens when you have a transition run by lawyers and lobbyists,” said one such adviser. “In their world, this was no big deal. They just didn’t get it.”

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.

IMMIGRANTS’ VIEWS: Nannies are surprised by the outcry over Baird. B1