Rather-Clinton Chat: How Warm and Fuzzy Was It? : Television: The anchorman’s conversation with the new President on ’48 Hours’ was a far cry from his interview with President Bush in 1988.

Anchorman Dan Rather’s one-hour television special with President Bill Clinton had political Washington buzzing Thursday, but more for its cuddly quality than for the news it made.

Rather in recent years has won a special place in the national press corps for his presidential encounters. His televised interview with George Bush in 1988 was so rough that it devolved into a blood feud that lasted all of Bush’s presidency, and triggered a debate about press fairness and objectivity.

But on Wednesday’s “48 Hours,” with a new President and a remarkably different tone, Rather opened the interview soft and, for much of the time, stayed there.

“People around here thought it was a suck-up interview,” said one of the most senior members of the Washington press corps, asking for anonymity.

“It was a little sucky, I guess, but it was all right,” one senior CBS official admitted.

Actually, the tone of the interview said something about the nature of network news these days, and the tone of the current wave of prime-time magazine shows.

“We were very conscious that this interview was for ’48 Hours,’ ” said Joseph Peyronnin, vice president and assistant to the president of CBS News. “Anyone who watched the entire program was well served by Dan Rather in learning about where Clinton is on a number of issues as well as who he is personally.

“I would also expect that all of those who didn’t get the interview are complaining.”

Nevertheless, those who expected another blistering interrogation by Rather would have been disappointed.

“I don’t know anybody who knows you well who isn’t worried about your lack of sleep,” Rather began. “How much do you sleep?”

The reporter who gained fame for standing up to Richard Nixon in a press conference wanted to know of this President, “Do you have time to think? . . . Do you ever sit here at night with the lights turned off and just look at the Washington Monument?”

The White House loved it. “It went great,” one of Clinton’s closest advisers bubbled afterward. CBS officials say future interviews with Clinton will be tougher.

CBS, like other news organizations, has had standing interview requests in with Clinton, who so far has limited his one-on-one interviews mostly to local news organizations. The White House agreed to provide his first network interview as President the day after he gave his first full-fledged press conference, Peyronnin said he believes, because it wanted to influence the vote in the Senate on his economic package.

What set the tone of the interview more than anything, some CBS veterans felt, was that the interview began with a tour of the White House. CBS insiders said the tour was the White House’s idea. “The TV producer types here were thrilled over that, especially for ’48 Hours,’ which has that kind of style. When I saw it, I thought, if only Dick Nixon had thought of giving Rather a tour,” said one CBS veteran.

Peyronnin, who dealt with the White House, said the idea of the walking tour was negotiated jointly, but that CBS was pushing it. “ ’48 Hours’ is a program with a lot of movement, not a sit-down interview show, and not ’60 Minutes,’ ” Peyronnin explained.

Clinton’s newness in office also influenced the tone of the interview. Several people at CBS submitted questions for Rather to ask, but researchers actually complained about the difficulty of coming up with meaningful tough questions to fill an hour, CBS insiders said, because Clinton has so little record yet.

A third factor in the show was Clinton’s skill and comfort at dodging tough questions.

When Rather tried to press the President, for instance, on whether the United States might retaliate if it found that Iran was involved the World Trade Center bombing in New York, Rather tried to pin him down by pointing out that he was dodging.

“I asked the question,” Rather said. “So far, you’re on the record as not answering.”

“That’s right,” the President said smiling. “I want to be on the record as not answering.”

Another factor in shaping the broadcast is the idea that some of the alternative media that gained influence in the last campaign, such as Larry King and Phil Donahue, are gaining in popularity and political influence precisely because they expose more of the human side of politicians, rather than reducing all political discourse to a form of combat, much of it waged in dense language of policy.

But there is some evidence that for now at least people have had enough of the human side. In preparing for Wednesday’s broadcast, CBS even had commissioned a poll of the public to find out what regular people would ask Clinton if they could. None of those questions, however, were asked. When it queried “What in particular about Bill Clinton personally would you like to learn?” for instance, 71% of Americans answered, “nothing.”