NEWS ANALYSIS : Cronyism Seen as a Source of Clinton Woes

As his Administration was collapsing around him in scandal and ineptitude, President Warren G. Harding bemoaned his failing fortunes to famed Kansas newspaperman William Allen White.

“I have no trouble with my enemies,” Harding said in 1923 after the eruption of the Teapot Dome scandal, involving two of his close friends and Cabinet officers, “but my goddamn friends, White, they are the ones who keep me walking the floor nights.”

The current occupant of the Oval Office must share the hapless Harding’s frustration with his friends, dozens of whom he has ensconced in powerful positions in the White House and Cabinet.

The mangled Justice Department nomination of C. Lani Guinier, a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, provides only the latest example of a crony problem encountered at one time or another in virtually all presidencies, but now looming as a particular threat to this one.

In drawing heavily on his and his wife’s extensive network of college, hometown and professional friends for top-level appointments, President Clinton finds himself confronting the dark side of the special trust and loyalty that such choices can offer.

Because of the personal bond, he may be more blind to their faults or political vulnerabilities, and open himself to the damage that results. And aides from outside the circle of Clinton cronydom--whose job it may be to flag dangerous acts or disastrous appointments--may be less likely to speak up against a Clinton friend for fear of offending the boss or his powerful wife.

As the Administration considers further staff and structural changes to quell the internal disarray, coming to grips with the friendly fire is emerging as a big priority.

With each new flap, “the suspicion grows that he’s in over his head. And it’s going to get worse,” said presidential scholar Stephen Ambrose of the University of New Orleans. “I don’t know anyone who’s gone so far appointing friends and cronies since Warren G. Harding, who got in similar trouble over the same thing.”

It was the well-known personal ties between Clinton and fellow Arkansan Harry Thomason that apparently explain why, when the sitcom mogul was wandering around the White House with his go-anywhere pass, nobody stopped him and questioned what he was doing.

And nobody dared ask Clinton why his Hollywood buddy was nosing around the travel office or suggested to the President that it might look bad for a rich businessman to appear to be meddling in the White House air charter business. Nor, apparently, did anyone tell Clinton that putting his distant Arkansas cousin Catherine Cornelius in charge of the travel office after he fired seven longtime employees would raise a rancid aroma.

The result was a major blunder that preoccupied the White House for two critical weeks as it was trying to push its deficit-reduction program through the House of Representatives.

In a similar vein, aides said last week that no one on the staff warned Clinton that Guinier had published views on race-based voting schemes that were in conflict with his own principles. Lower-ranking officials assumed that Clinton was intimately familiar with the controversial legal theories of his longtime friend and law school classmate.

But what is a staff for if not to second-guess the boss, to play devil’s advocate and to tell him when his shirttail is hanging out?

“One of Clinton’s problems is that he doesn’t know the elders of the Democratic Party very well,” Ambrose said. “Anybody over 40 in the Democratic Party he considers the past generation and he’s not using them. It seems like he doesn’t know (former Democratic Party chairman) Bob Strauss; he doesn’t have an Arthur Schlesinger Jr. around to give historical perspective and say, ‘Gee, President Roosevelt handled this this way.’ ”

Ambrose said Clinton’s term is off to the worst start of any presidency in memory, with the possible exception of Harding’s.

And the complications created by Clinton’s friends have repeatedly been apparent.

Nobody thought to tell Webster Hubbell, the President’s golfing buddy and Mrs. Clinton’s former senior partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Ark., that he should drop his membership in a virtually all-white country club because he was taking the Justice Department’s No. 3 post.

Hubbell was forced to quit the Country Club of Little Rock when his membership became an issue during his confirmation proceeding. Also surrendering their club cards were three other Clinton pals, including White House Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty.

Some say the Clintons may have been too patient in overlooking the shortcomings of Bernard Nussbaum, the White House counsel, because he was once Mrs. Clinton’s boss on a House committee investigating Watergate. Nussbaum has been criticized for inadequately vetting Guinier’s writings and for playing a leading role in the travel office debacle.

While McLarty has come under criticism for failing to be aggressive enough in overseeing administration of the White House, aides say it is widely assumed that because of a relationship with Clinton that dates to kindergarten, McLarty would never be forced to leave.

Instead, Clinton and his young circle of pals, Rhodes scholars and Yale Law alums, Renaissance Weekend networkers and practitioners of the “politics of meaning” are hanging together and reinventing Washington based on models developed in universities and state capitals.

They are reminiscent of the idealistic band who followed John F. Kennedy to Washington, and whose follies and failures are chronicled in David Halberstam’s 1969 book “The Best and the Brightest.”

“It was a glittering time. They literally swept into office, ready, moving, generating their style, their confidence--they were going to get America moving again,” Halberstam said of Kennedy’s circle who became his government.

“Everyone was going to Washington and the word went out quickly around the Eastern seacoast, at the universities and in the political clubs, that the best men were going to Washington. Things were going to be done and it was going to be great fun; the challenge awaited and these men did not doubt their capacity to answer that challenge.”

This sense of worth is shared in large measure by the men and women who populate the upper reaches of the Clinton Administration. They are not there because of family connections or inherited wealth; they are there because they earned it through brilliance and inspired networking.

History is littered with examples of presidents who were hurt by the friends they brought to government. And some of the most trusted did the most damage. And when judgment time finally came for them, friendship made the process much more difficult.

Thus Clinton’s anguish was multiplied last week when he felt compelled to jettison Guinier, who was more than a disappointed office-seeker; she was a friend who felt personally betrayed.

One of the most corrupt members of the Ulysses S. Grant Administration was Orville Babcock, personal secretary to the former general. But Grant’s loyalty was such that he “would not let him go until the last moment,” says Robert Dallek, historian and presidential biographer at UCLA.

The Administration of President Jimmy Carter, generally considered highly ethical, suffered one of its worst blows because of presidential pal/Budget Director Bert Lance, whose financial practices as a Georgia banker escaped pre-appointment scrutiny because “we thought, if he’s the President’s close friend, who are we to challenge his business dealings?” recalled a Carter Administration official.

After the weeks of chaos, Clinton is bringing in outside political talent such as newly named presidential counselor David Gergen to sharpen the operation and change its internal chemistry. Some presidential analysts say he should go further by explicitly notifying aides that no one should receive special treatment because of their longstanding relationships. And he should notify all Administration aides to expect dismissal as soon as there is any question of conduct that could compromise the goals of the presidency.

That was the habit of Lyndon B. Johnson, according to historian Dallek. “He told them right upfront that if there was a whiff of trouble, they were gone,” he said.

Two Friends of Bill

C. Lani Guinier: Lower officials had assumed that President Clinton was intimately familiar with the legal theories of this longtime friend and law school classmate. The controversy over her published views on race-based voting schemes scuttled her Justice Department nomination.

Webster Hubbell: No one thought to tell this golfing buddy of the President and former law partner of the First Lady that he should quit a virtually all-white country club before taking a post in the Justice Department. He was forced to drop his membership when it became an issue in his confirmation hearings.