Scene 2, Take 3: Mr. Bill Learns to Count to 1,000% : Lani Guinier: Fumbling and bumbling by the White House is a primer on how to win enemies and amuse people.

Remember Tom Eagleton? He was--for about a minute--the anointed running mate of the hapless George McGovern in 1972. When it became known that, several years earlier, he had undergone electro-shock therapy to combat chronic depression, the clamor began for Eagleton’s withdrawal. McGovern at first announced that he was behind Eagleton “1,000%.”

Chalk it up to a different math system, but by my reckoning, McGovern’s endorsement was worth, as the good ol’ boys like to chuckle, “a bucketful of warm spit.” And it left about the same taste in the American public’s mouth. “I’m behind you 1,000%” became the punch line of scores of sardonic jokes.

Fast forward 20 years; now comes Lani Guinier to be nominated as head of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division. She had credentials--Harvard College, Yale Law School; she had experience--an impressive record of wins in civil-rights litigation, and some of her writings were decidedly controversial. Her friend and colleague, Bill Clinton, decided to nominate her anyway, feeling that she was the best person for the job, and feeling that he could take the heat.

Apparently, he neglected to take the temperature of the kitchen. Instead of backing Guinier, Clinton’s warm praise for her character and competence turned progressively lukewarm in distressingly short order. The specter of Eagleton hovered over the press conference in which a chastened Clinton announced that he’d withdrawn Guinier’s nomination. There was no point in continuing, he announced, because Guinier would never survive the confirmation hearing.

Maybe it wasn’t Guinier’s survival the President was worried about. The vision of another articulate, unbent black woman crisply responding to a bench of white men--and Carol Moseley Braun, the black Illinois senator who, apparently, has decided to behave as if she is one of them--sent shivers up the putative spines of the august Senate Judiciary Committee (shades of Anita Hill!) and those seismic rumblings quickly persuaded Clinton that he’d be out there on his own if he pursued Guinier’s nomination.

The rest is history. Clinton faced reporters and told them he’d, um, made a little mistake. See, he was good friends with and eminently respected Guinier, but um, well, he’d never actually read any of her writing. (A slightly more sophisticated version of “The dog ate my homework.”) The President, in an eternal quest (like his predecessor) to remain liked, has lost it all: His political enemies, while happy with his decision, secretly chuckle at his vertiginous ambivalence. His supporters worry that he’s just not catching on. And African-Americans, who helped usher Clinton into the White House, are wondering at the President’s much-promoted pre-election commitment to aggressively protect civil rights and waiting to see which representative of the our national community will be sacrificed next to assuage the cooling ardor of so-called Reagan Democrats.

Pounded by the Clinton mallet of political expediency, we’re starting to feel like that little clay figure on “Saturday Night Live:” Oh noooooo!