Gergen May Get Post Held by Stephanopoulos

In a stunning shake-up of the senior levels of his White House, President Clinton has reached out to former President Ronald Reagan’s communications director, David Gergen, asking him to serve in the same role in his Administration, White House officials confirmed Friday.

Gergen, 51, would replace George Stephanopoulos, who will move into a new job as overall coordinator of the White House’s policy and political apparatus--a post that will take him out of the press limelight as the President’s chief spokesman but will give him broad authority to supply the White House with the internal focus that has been notably lacking in recent months.

Stephanopoulos, 32, and the White House press corps have developed an increasingly antagonistic relationship during the early months of the Administration.

In recent weeks, particularly after the blowup over the White House travel office, relations had reached a near poisonous level, with some reporters openly ridiculing the spokesman while he, in private, fumed over the reporters’ obsession with what he considered trivial issues.

Clinton planned to formally offer the job to Gergen in a meeting Friday night and was likely to announce it today, aides said. They cautioned that a final decision could not be made until after the two men had met, but added that the deal was all but final.

The choice of Gergen, which Clinton and Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty had been considering privately for several days, comes after weeks of turmoil in the White House during which virtually every senior figure ever connected to the Democratic Party seemed to be advancing a different theory about how Clinton’s staff should be shaken up.

This move would seem to make further major changes in the White House lineup unlikely, at least in the short term, officials said.

In an interview earlier in the day, before the decision to bring Gergen onto the staff was known, McLarty said the Administration has learned from its mistakes and planned to augment the White House staff with seasoned political figures. Learning from the first 100 days of his Administration, Clinton expects to soon have “a full and competent staff,” McLarty said.

“The chief of staff will finally get to be a chief of staff, instead of acting like the head of a committee,” a key member of Congress said. “McLarty will be stronger, but some of his children will be changed.”

Stephanopoulos, reached Friday evening, declined to comment in detail about the move but described his new role as being Clinton’s “personal policy and political person, to make sure that these things hang together.”

Gergen, who is editor-at-large of U.S. News & World Report and a commentator for public television’s “McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,” could not be reached for comment.

The move, which would place a senior Republican strategist who worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Reagan into a central role in a Democratic Administration, was closely held by Clinton and McLarty. News of the change stunned White House officials as word spread through the corridors of the West Wing.

“I can’t say,” said one official when asked what the move meant. “I haven’t heard what our explanation is.”

Other officials said that the reasons centered on two decisions by Clinton and McLarty.

First, they said, Clinton badly needed a powerful aide who could stay with him at all times to combat his tendency to talk and think about too many things at once. Stephanopoulos played that role during the early months of Clinton’s campaign. “George will stay right on Clinton so he doesn’t get off track,” one senior official said.

Clinton, during a town hall meeting on CBS earlier this week, said that while he did not think his Administration was trying to do too much, he had been guilty of talking about too many different things.

The second decision, aides said, stemmed from Stephanopoulos’ deteriorating relations with the press, which reached a new low after the White House announced that it had fired its seven-person travel staff and that the FBI was investigating their conduct--then hired a group led by the President’s distant cousin to run the office.

The affair led to charges of nepotism and cronyism, and a complaint from Atty. Gen. Janet Reno that Clinton aides had improperly queried the FBI about its investigation. The White House is now conducting an internal investigation of the matter.

White House aides denied Friday that they thought Stephanopoulos had lost credibility with reporters. But, in a backhanded form of confirmation, they said Gergen’s strength was precisely that quality.

“They want to beef up the communications department” a senior official said. Gergen “has great credibility with the Washington press corps and has the experience of having developed a communications strategy to move a major economic program through Congress.”

That statement, however, underlined an irony of Gergen’s move: The economic program he helped shepherd through Congress--Reagan’s program of 1981--is precisely the one Clinton is trying to undo.

White House aides insisted that contradiction would not be a problem, either with liberal Democrats or with the public. Gergen, some pointed out, was always considered a moderate Republican who was not thought to be a true-believer by longtime Reaganauts.

Gergen served as a staff assistant to Nixon from 1971 to 1974. After Nixon resigned, he became Ford’s director of communications.

Under Reagan, Gergen became staff director in 1981, then served as assistant to the President for communications until 1983. Gergen has a law degree from Harvard.

Profile: David Gergen

Here is background on the President’s new choice as communications director:

* Age: 51

* Education: Bachelor’s degree from Yale, 1963; law degree from Harvard, 1967

* Career: Assistant in the Richard Nixon Administration, 1971-72; director of office of communications in the Gerald R. Ford Administration, 1975-77; communications director in the Ronald Reagan Administration, 1981-83; currently editor-at-large of U.S. News & World Report and public television commentator.

Source: Who’s Who in America