NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Risks Image as Reed in the Wind : Presidency: His waffling over the Supreme Court nomination may undercut his leadership. Analysts see lack of ‘skill and will’ for the office.

President Clinton’s drawn-out quest for a Supreme Court nominee threatens to reinforce the perception of indecisiveness and ineptitude that could undercut his chances for success as chief executive.

As the President swung one way and then another over the court choice last week, some analysts suggested that his approach lacked purpose and direction.

“He’s like a wildflower and goes in every direction the wind blows,” said the University of Chicago’s Philip Kurland, an authority on the relationship between the presidency and the Supreme Court.

Some observed that Clinton’s indecision was exposing possible nominees to needless embarrassment and would make it harder for him to recruit future candidates for the judiciary and other posts in his Administration.

“Instead of vetting these nominees in private, his method seems to be one of throwing their names out there and letting people bat them around,” said Charles Jones, a University of Wisconsin political scientist. “Since he (Clinton) says he hasn’t made up his mind about them, there’s no real defense for them.”

And while the court nomination remained in limbo, Capitol Hill seethed with the discontent of Democratic lawmakers over previous examples of Clintonian temporizing: his retreat from his proposal for a broad-based energy tax and his withdrawal of C. Lani Guinier’s nomination for the Justice Department’s top civil rights post.

House members who had backed Clinton in last month’s close vote on his economic plan, which at that point included the controversial energy tax, “got the hell beaten out of them” when they returned to their home districts, the top aide to one Democratic legislative leader said.

Some lawmakers recalled that when Clinton sought their support, he was asked by Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.), “Will you stick with us on this, Mr. President?” Clinton is said to have replied, “I’m with you all the way.”

Resentment over the withdrawal of Guinier’s nomination was most intense among members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who put off a Clinton invitation for a peace parley. Instead, the 39-member group threatened to oppose his budget package if the compromises Clinton reaches with conservatives in the Senate are not to their liking.

“There may soon be a widespread belief in Washington that any deal with Clinton needs three witnesses, because he doesn’t deliver,” said Emory University political scientist Merle Black. “And that really undermines his ability to influence other politicians.”

Any President has plenty of advantages that go with his office in trying to persuade other politicians to give him the backing he needs to carry out his agenda. But as Harvard presidential scholar Richard Neustadt wrote in “Presidential Power,” which former President John F. Kennedy used as a handbook: “The men he (the President) would persuade must be convinced in their own minds that he has skill and will enough to use his advantages.”

That is where Clinton has seemed to come up short, as he has been pushed and pulled by contending forces. And any loss of credibility hurts the President’s chances of reaching beyond the Capital Beltway to persuade the citizenry and thus deploy the power of public opinion.

White House strategists have sought to explain some of Clinton’s shifts as part of an effort to lay claim to the political center by complying with campaign pledges to address the interests of the middle class.

But some analysts feel that explanations of Clinton’s conduct have more to do with his personal style and beliefs than any ideological strategy.

“There’s been a lot of talk about Clinton moving to the political center,” said Patricia King, a Georgetown University law professor and a disappointed supporter of the Guinier nomination. “He needs to think about his own center and what he really believes.”

“He doesn’t seem to know how to take charge of a situation,” said Vanderbilt University’s Erwin Hargrove, author of a book on Jimmy Carter’s presidency, “Leadership and the Politics of the Public Good.”

For this Hargrove blames “the basic element of (Clinton’s) personality, his desire to please. He keeps trying to put things together without offending anybody.”

Bert Rockman of the Brookings Institution said: “Clinton has got to really define what he is about and what he believes. He can’t continue to love everybody equally.”

Clinton’s priority now seems to be to work his way out of the gridlock over the court vacancy, which has been waiting to be filled since Justice Byron R. White announced his retirement nearly three months ago.

Early last week, the White House signaled that Clinton was on the verge of filling that spot by picking Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The selection of a politician, rather than a jurist, seemed in line with Clinton’s initial intention to pick someone with experience not only in the law but also “in the problems of real people.”

However, opposition to Babbitt’s appointment emerged. Environmentalists feared that his replacement at Interior might not be as vigorous a friend of public lands, and Republicans complained about Babbitt’s political background.

Clinton shifted to safer ground. He was said to be looking with favor upon the credentials of U.S. 1st Circuit Court Judge Stephen G. Breyer. With the backing of key Republican Senate leaders, Breyer was brought to Washington for a luncheon meeting with the President, and his nomination seemed imminent.

But the week ended not with a decision being made but with a familiar-sounding hitch making headlines: Breyer had failed to pay Social Security taxes for a household worker. The oversight recalled the case of Zoe Baird, whose nomination for attorney general had to be withdrawn because she had failed to pay such taxes and had knowingly hired illegal immigrants in violation of the law.

Breyer’s fate in the Senate, if Clinton should name him, appears to depend on his ability to distinguish between the two situations.

“The same standards have to be applied,” Democratic Sen. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona said on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s CNN program. Breyer might be in “big trouble,” DeConcini added, “if he can’t explain it better than Zoe Baird did.”