NEWS ANALYSIS : Clash With Nunn Becomes Test of Power for Clinton

Born of a volatile mix of clashing principles, political rivalries, missed cues, wounded pride and contested turf, the already explosive issue of gays in the military has become a test of power as well--a struggle between President Clinton and one of the most prideful barons of Congress, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

And even as White House aides scramble to find a compromise to diffuse the clash, the outcome almost certainly will shape that most crucial of presidential assets--the perception of power.

Just down the road, Clinton must confront other important members of Congress and powerful interest groups on even more difficult and far-reaching issues, including taxes, health care and budget cuts. If the new President is perceived to have backed down from this early trial, other challengers almost certainly will be emboldened to test his resolve more directly in the future.

As a result, although the issue of gays in the military is in some ways unique, members of Congress, lobbyists and others are watching from the sidelines, taking the measure of the new President, beginning to calculate how bold or cautious they should be when their own turn in the arena comes.

The lines of the present struggle became clear Wednesday as Nunn, in a speech on the Senate floor, essentially offered Clinton a deal: He would help block a move by Republicans to write the military’s current ban on gays into law but only if the Administration would agree to his terms--essentially to make no final decision on the matter, either on implementation or on the basic question of whether or not to lift the ban, until after he conducts extensive hearings.

Clinton aides said the fundamental question is not open to negotiation. As a candidate, Clinton promised to overturn the ban and now President Clinton intends to follow through, they said.

Yet Wednesday night, after a White House meeting with Nunn and the President, Defense Secretary Les Aspin indicated that some kind of six-month consultation period on the issue is in the offing. And it was not entirely clear whether the fundamental issue of ending the ban is or is not on the table.

In part, the clash involves a deeply held difference of principle. Clinton and his aides repeatedly have described the issue of gays in the military as one of civil rights, as White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos did in talking about congressional opposition to lifting the gay ban.

“Whenever you try to make progress in civil rights, there is opposition,” he said.

Nunn, for his part, presents the issue in very different terms. “It’s not simply the right of homosexuals at stake. It’s also the right of all those men and women who serve in the military,” he said in his speech.

But, as with most high-profile issues in Washington, the clash also involves matters of personality and prerogative.

White House aides argued that despite his current difficulties over the issue, Clinton will stick by his guns and that will pay off in the end.

“If you look at Ronald Reagan, people disagreed with him on issue after issue, but they respected him for his principles,” said one senior adviser.

For his part, Nunn “sees this in part as a mano - a - mano test of manhood about who runs defense policy,” said one former senior defense official who has known the senator for many years. “This is a chance to assert himself and the prerogatives of Congress and to take Les Aspin down a notch or two,” the official added. Aspin is a longtime rival of Nunn’s.

A source close to Nunn said Wednesday that the senator, already uncomfortable with the direction in which Clinton’s policy is headed, was goaded into anger over the weekend when Aspin appeared on a TV talk show to discuss policy issues that Nunn did not think he had been consulted about. He was even more angry about leaked copies of a memorandum Aspin wrote to Clinton that named Nunn as a chief problem for the White House on the gay issue.

White House officials and congressional sources agreed that Clinton probably had no choice but to take the heat on the issue once he made his campaign pledge.

But the problem has been worsened by a combination of White House miscues coupled with some events outside Clinton’s control.

Nunn is just one of several senior senators who have complained recently about highhanded treatment from the White House. Earlier this week, for example, Clinton had to call and apologize to Finance Committee Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) after an unidentified White House aide was quoted as making a disparaging comment about him.

“Clinton was furious” about the incident, said one senior White House adviser, but the damage was done. “A lot fell through the cracks moving in,” the adviser added. “It will not be repeated.”

In the particular case of the ban on gays in the military, the problems have been heightened by Clinton’s awkward relationship with Nunn.

The two have been allies as part of the group of moderate-to-conservative Southern Democrats who pushed during the last decade to shift the party’s emphasis back toward the middle-class issues that formed the core of Clinton’s campaign.

But Nunn has never hidden his own interest in the presidency--an ambition probably put forever out of reach for the 54-year-old senator by Clinton’s victory. After the election, Nunn strongly signaled a desire to become secretary of state and has long been extremely sensitive to any suggestion of executive branch slights of congressional prerogatives.

During the fall campaign, Nunn worked hard for Clinton’s election. During the spring primaries, however, many Clinton aides were angered by his on-again, off-again performance--particularly when Clinton’s conduct during the Vietnam War-era draft was questioned.

Moreover, White House officials said Hillary Rodham Clinton believes that Nunn ducked out on her during one of the darkest days of the Clinton campaign: the February morning when news broke that a tabloid would publish Gennifer Flowers’ allegations of a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was in Georgia for the day, alone except for a junior aide. Nunn and the state’s governor, Zell Miller, were expected to accompany her to public events that day, aides said, but Nunn never showed up.

Whether a deliberate snub or an inadvertent mix-up, the incident remains Exhibit A as members of the tight-knit Clinton circle describe the history of tensions between the new President and the Senate’s ranking baron of military affairs.

The present confrontation is unique in several respects. The issue of gays in the military is exceptionally charged with emotion. Moreover, Nunn enjoys a level of authority on military issues that other committee chairmen may not be able to equal. And Clinton, who opposed the Vietnam War and avoided the draft in his youth, is especially vulnerable on military issues.

On the other side, Clinton aides argue that gays in the military is not a make-or-break issue for the President in the way health care and economic progress will be. Nonetheless, the confrontation has grown beyond those limiting factors.