COLUMN ONE : The Spin Doctor’s Prognosis : David Gergen smooths Clinton’s message to the public and polishes the public’s view of Clinton. It’s a powerful--and precarious--job. Even his friends wonder how long he can hang on.

In a holding room on the fourth floor of the Old Executive Office Building, the President of the United States is late, again.

Bill Clinton and four aides are mulling over what he should say via satellite to ABC-TV affiliate bosses about an appointment he is about to make. As they talk, neither the President nor the aides seem to notice they are keeping the executives waiting and using up costly satellite time.

There is a tap at the door and a tall, pale man whose blond hair is thinning badly, slips inside. “Mr. President,” he says in a voice courtly but firm, “it’s time to go.” Clinton rises and follows him out.

“If that is all David Gergen does for this White House, he will help us,” one presidential aide said later.

David Richmond Gergen, 51, the new counselor to the President, wants to do far more for the Clinton White House than make his boss show up on time. After only six weeks in his new post, his influence is surpassed by only two others in government, the First Lady and the vice president, according to most accounts. His portfolio gives him access to all staff meetings, and he reports directly to the President without passing through Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty.

In effect, he has become the chief figure helping a once faltering new Administration understand and use the vast resources of the presidency to communicate a clear vision to the public. At the same time, Gergen is trying to impart to Clinton his own understanding of how Washington works, giving the former Arkansas governor some of his sure-footedness inside the Beltway.

It is a role that could lift Gergen, a former aide to three Republican chief executives, from the crowded ranks of officials-turned-pundits into the pantheon of presidential “wise men” who left a mark on their times: Colonel House to Woodrow Wilson, Bernard Baruch to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Gergen mentor James A. Baker III to Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

It is also a high-profile role that attracts critics and skeptics in abundance. There are many in Washington who wonder how long Gergen can function effectively among the Democrats who have seized the White House.

In these early weeks, Gergen has been somewhat of a mystery to his new staff, a delicate hand with his light fingerprints on everything, moving constantly from his basement office in the old barbershop to the Oval Office.

“It’s fascinating to see him operate,” marveled one senior Administration official. “He’s all over the place.”

Often, his role is all but invisible. “Watch,” Gergen told a friend at the White House early on, “and you’ll see the President reaching out in a few days to Bob Dole.”

Less than a week later, the Clintons were spotted having a very public dinner with Dole, the Republican leader and the President’s recent nemesis, at a downtown restaurant, with Washington Democratic lawyer Robert S. Strauss as host.

Yet interviews with his former and present colleagues, plus a review of Gergen files from previous presidencies, suggest that for Gergen to realize the full potential of the job he must meet four major challenges:

First, he must improve the White House communications effort, primarily by imposing discipline on a President who sometimes lacks restraint and whose behavior suggests a loathing for the press. As a top aide to Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Reagan, Gergen believed in near-total orchestration of the news through a combination of leaks, charm and control.

He has scored some early successes, from a series of skillful press conferences to a rapprochement with Republicans. But Clinton’s fortunes also have been improved by a budget victory in the Senate, a Supreme Court nomination praised by both parties and an error-free summit in Japan--matters of substance more than Gergen-esque spin control.

Second, Republican Gergen must survive the jealousy and suspicion of Democrats in the White House who do not trust him. His early attempts at smoothing feathers have had only mixed success. While his past suggests he is a man of diplomacy and subtlety, friends say he is not tremendously skilled at political infighting.

Third, he must tackle areas in which he has little experience. For all his work in three Republican White Houses and a decade in Washington journalism, he has functioned primarily as a political operative in the area of communications, campaigning, speech writing and debate strategy.

Finally, while Gergen has decried “scorching partisanship” in Washington, his record shows a capacity for the roughest kind of hardball politics. And his position as a former GOP operative serving a Democratic President will test both his tactics and his loyalty.

The key here, insiders suggest, is whether he has Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support, and so far he seems to.

When Gergen was named to his post, Democrats were split between pragmatists and moderates hoping he would help Clinton and some liberals in the Administration who were suspicious of him.

Many of Gergen’s Republican friends predicted that, ultimately, he will fail.

Shortly after Gergen joined the White House, Brent Scowcroft, the former aide to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush, ran into another Ford Administration veteran on a Washington street.

“How long do you think David will last in the Clinton White House?” Scowcroft asked.

“I give him eight to 12 months,” the Republican said.

“That long?”

*

Shaping up communications is among the first orders of business. New White House Communications Director Mark D. Gearan reports to Gergen, not to McLarty. After a month, more subtle evidence of Gergen’s hand can be seen.

Before Gergen, the Clinton White House seemed to demonstrate a lack of respect for the resident press corps--a transgression that can translate into negative coverage.

After Gergen arrived, reporters were invited to Fourth of July fireworks at the White House and barbecues. On the eve of the Economic Summit in Japan, 14 of the most powerful journalists in town were feted at a luncheon with the President, vice president, counselors Gergen and George Stephanopoulos, Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and economic and national security advisers. “Never in 20 years have I seen such high-level effort to cozy up to us,” said one of the journalists who attended.

One of Gergen’s other great skills, said former Reagan Administration colleague Ken Duberstein, is knowing how to kill a bad story quickly or keep a good one going.

For example, disaster loomed when Clinton lost his temper and cut reporters short at the recent ceremony announcing Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nomination to the Supreme Court. So the next day, Clinton appeared in the press room to give the media a second chance to ask questions--thus defusing any anger.

At the second press conference, Clinton crisply executed several press-management maneuvers with Republican-like skill. He opened with an introductory statement, ensuring that he delivered the news he wanted. He used questions as platforms to re-articulate the overall goals of his economic policy. And when asked to comment on his Administration’s “wavering” style, he challenged the question’s assumption, ticked off a series of accomplishments and said his “is the most decisive presidency you’ve had in a very long time on all the big issues that matter.”

That sound bite was then replayed on television and in the morning papers. Even ABC’s Brit Hume, the reporter with whom Clinton had clashed the day before, called the press conference the “most spirited defense of his Administration” yet. The press, in short, admired Clinton for his technique, if not for his substance. He dodged them well and they respected him for it.

These were the same techniques Gergen mastered for the Republicans, according to his memos found in the archives of Presidents Ford, Nixon and Reagan.

A 1982 memo to Reagan on how the Republican White House flooded the media with spokesmen carrying the “Reagan message” is extraordinary for the degree of manipulation of the airwaves.

It began with a 9:15 meeting to “determine the ‘line of the day,’ ” as well as daily distribution of the White House talking points to key Republicans. From mid-September through October that year, Reagan’s Cabinet alone made more than 332 media and political appearances, the memo boasted, plus more than 150 radio interviews, plus 1,300 speaking appearances by sub-Cabinet officials.

The longer-term question is whether Gergen can achieve that level of coordination among Democrats, a party known for self-immolation, not Republican-style unity. And can he impose that level of control over Clinton, given Clinton’s proclivity for improvising in front of the microphone?

Another question for Gergen is whether he can win the staff loyalty people say is essential to success inside the White House.

Gergen was asked to leave the Reagan Administration in 1984, several Reagan advisers say, though the exact reasons are not clear.

“He is not an infighter, and that may have been one of the problems,” said Michael K. Deaver, one of Reagan’s top advisers.

Even before he moved into his new post, Gergen saw evidence that he may have people shooting at him again. A few days before he officially arrived, Gergen called a meeting of the entire communication staff, about 50 people, in the room which served as Nixon’s office when he was vice president under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Gergen began the meeting in typical style, saying diplomatically that things were not as bad for Clinton as some thought, that the country wanted the President to succeed.

He went around the room and asked people to introduce themselves. When speech writer Allan Sloan’s turn came, Gergen began to reminisce about his days as a speech writer for Nixon. As he recounted the high esteem speech writers had then, he began to name some of his fellow alumni: conservative New York Times columnist William Safire, neoconservative writer and journalist Ben Wattenberg, conservative TV panelist Patrick J. Buchanan.

Suddenly, Vice President Al Gore’s press secretary, Marla Romash, interrupted. Her tone was challenging and humorless, a role she often likes to play. “Are you trying to woo us,” she asked, “or alienate us?”

The meeting was only the first sign of the tightrope Gergen must walk.

In his press conference when he took the job, Gergen decried what he termed the “scorching partisanship” that pervades politics in Washington. Yet through his career, he has applied his talents to just such partisanship. In the Nixon White House, he was part of the attack group that worked for Charles Colson.

“It was our job to screw George McGovern at every opportunity,” said one veteran of the Colson group who worked with Gergen, “and we did it with great enthusiasm.”

Gergen also urged President Ford in 1976 to mount an all-out attack on Jimmy Carter, noting at the time that “we cannot change the perception of Mr. Ford, but we can change the perception of Mr. Carter.” Drawing a card from his Nixon years, Gergen wrote: “We should run hard against the chaos of the 1960s--much harder.”

Nevertheless, most Republican friends do not see any real ideological conflict between Clinton and Gergen. “I have always thought of him as a sort of Eisenhower kind of Republican, very pragmatic, not ideological,” said Doug Bailey, a colleague from the Ford campaign and a longtime friend.

“He never really believed in Ronald Reagan,” said Reagan adviser Lyn Nofziger.

Nofziger and other conservatives have doubts about Gergen, just as the hard-line liberals might. But Deaver, for one, thrived in the Reagan White House without strong ideological pedigree. “I survived anyway because I had two people backing me,” he says--the President and the First Lady.

With a good deal of history behind him, and without clear lines of authority, Gergen’s future will depend on the same thing, several White House veterans said.

Profile: David Gergen

* Age: 51

* Birthplace: Durham, N.C.

* Current position: Counselor to President Clinton.

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

* Career: Staff assistant to President Richard Nixon, 1971-72, and then special assistant to Nixon, 1973-74. Director of White House communications for President Gerald R. Ford, 1975-77. Managing editor of American Enterprise Institute Public Opinion magazine, 1977-81. Worked for President Ronald Reagan, 1981-83, as communications director. Resident fellow at Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass., 1983-85. In 1986, he was named editor-at-large for U.S. News & World Report magazine.

* Personal: Married to Anne Gergen; two children, Christopher and Katherine.

Source: Who’s Who in America