NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Cabinet: More Stumbles Than Successes

Ending a briefing in the wood-paneled solemnity of her conference room, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno read a quotation from Abraham Lincoln: “If I were to read everything bad everyone said about me, I might as well close up shop.”

Eight months ago, such displays of candor and probity were lifting Reno to unexpected stardom in President Clinton’s Cabinet. Now, although still popular, she is also fighting a rear-guard action against critics in Washington who question her leadership and loyalty to the President’s agenda.

Reno has company in adversity. Blessed with talent and equipped with gold-plated resumes, many of the members of the Clinton Cabinet nonetheless have failed to meet the expectations that had been set for the first team of Democrats to move into Washington’s top jobs in 16 years.

In their debut year, some members of the Cabinet have proved successful, rising in stature and influence. Many others, however, have tripped and stumbled in the performance of what is admittedly a difficult assignment: helping to shape new national agendas at a time of skimpy resources, shielding their President from embarrassment or unwanted controversy and helping sell Administration policies to the public.

Underlying all this is a political reality that Cabinet members of all administrations, and particularly this one, must eventually face: the real star of the show is the President himself. In Clinton’s case, it was probably inevitable that the White House would reserve for itself key decisions on such major issues as health care, economic policy, trade and welfare reform.

Cabinet members form a supporting cast whose role is to stay just out of the limelight, not to share it. And, to switch metaphors, they must serve as the President’s downfield blockers, shielding him from political attack and, at all cost, never ever getting in his way.

It was the failure to master this difficult ground that last month opened the trapdoor beneath Defense Secretary Les Aspin.

If Aspin was the first to exit, plenty of his colleagues are in difficulty: Secretary of State Warren Christopher, unable to formulate a crisp and coherent post-Cold War policy for a President who is preoccupied with domestic problems; Reno, too independent of the White House and, worse, too popular in her own right; Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, out of step with the younger generation in the White House; Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, under scrutiny for his dealings with a Vietnamese businessman.

Some argue that the Cabinet stars who have the best chance of distinguishing themselves are those whose orbits are furthest from Clinton’s sun--those whose goals are not so dear to his heart that they invite his constant attention. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is one; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros may be another.

Even some White House aides, asked to pick the Cabinet’s stand-out performers, name second-tier deputies before those at the traditional core agencies of Treasury, State, Defense and Justice.

Some Cabinet secretaries have labored under the additional handicap of functioning with many senior appointed positions unfilled. The Defense, Justice and Commerce departments are the hardest hit--only 10 of Commerce’s top 28 jobs are filled, for example--and nearly half of appointed positions are still vacant overall.

The secretaries have also run into competition from some who are not legally Cabinet members, though deemed by Clinton to be of Cabinet rank. Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Office of Management and Budget who was in the doghouse last spring for a burst of candor on the Administration’s setbacks, has consolidated power as genial chief wielder of the budget cleaver. Another Californian, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, has distinguished himself fighting for the twin international trade treaties that have unexpectedly ranked high among Clinton’s first-year accomplishments.

A closer look shows the progress and frustrations of the Cabinet’s first year.

Treasury: Bentsen Works to Increase Visibility

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. “I’ve been part of the action,” the former senator asserts these days, but the words may only underscore his failure to become the foremost voice on economic policy.

This traditional role of the Treasury secretary has quietly migrated to Robert E. Rubin, head of the National Economic Council, the coordinating apparatus that operates under the White House eaves. OMB’s Panetta is more influential in some areas of economic policy and Bentsen’s second in command, Roger Altman, is personally closer to the boss.

Bentsen’s difficulty is partly style: the 72-year-old Texan has not taken to the graduate-dorm style of policy-making that now dominates in the White House. Notable by his absence from public events for several months, he dissented on some key decisions, including Vice President Al Gore’s broad-based energy tax. More recently he has been markedly unenthusiastic about financing plans for the health care reform scheme. (He couldn’t bring himself to handle the lead-off congressional testimony for the plan, sending Altman instead.)

Still, Bentsen’s influence was crucial in persuading Clinton to stick with the North American Free Trade Agreement. And now the talk is of his efforts to increase his visibility, rather than retire with his memories to South Texas.

State: Christopher Dogged by String of Bad Reviews

Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Corporate lawyer and Clinton confidant, Christopher is so meticulous that he has been known to take pages of handwritten notes to cocktail parties to ensure he would not lack for well-informed small talk. But that preparation was not enough to enable Christopher to make silk purses of the President’s intentions in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti.

Christopher’s reviews hit bottom in May, when he swung through Europe asking the allies to back a plan to support the Bosnian Muslims. The Europeans snubbed the plan, and the sorry episode marked one of the few times since World War II that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies have not gone along with the United States on a matter of policy.

Christopher has also seen a leaching of some of his powers. Amid grumbling about Christopher’s communications skills, Gore has stepped into a more visible role as foreign policy spokesman, while other officials are gaining influence on Russia, China and Japan.

Christopher’s apologists say, with some justice, that Daniel Webster himself would have stammered with the brief this secretary of state was handed. They say that much credit is owed him for holding together the Middle East peace negotiations.

Justice: Reno Charms Public, Pains White House

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. The former Dade County, Fla., prosecutor relieved Clinton’s headache from the withdrawal of nominee Zoe Baird, but lately she has been causing the White House shooting pains nearly as often as relieving them.

After her public relations masterstroke of accepting responsibility for the muffed April assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., she drew criticism for weak efforts on behalf of the Administration’s anti-crime bill, a top priority. Each month she demonstrated with ever more painful clarity her differences with the President’s views on crime fighting, including his top campaign pledge of adding 100,000 more street cops and his support for mandatory minimum sentences.

Even her administration of the department has brought criticism; Webster Hubbell, the agency’s No. 3 official, “talks to the White House a lot more than she does,” said one Clinton aide. An outside adviser calls the attorney general “a loser.”

The agency is still missing 14 top appointees, including senior officials for civil rights and environmental enforcement. Reno has taken steps to increase sharply the flow of public information and begun overhauling the Justice Department’s internal investigation mechanism.

With many Americans charmed by her classroom field trips and earnest talk of fighting crime’s root causes, her mail is still running three times as heavy as her predecessor’s.

Health: Shalala Getting Hang of It After Some Miscues

Health and Human Service Secretary Donna Shalala. A leader of the Administration’s liberal wing, Shalala advertises her independence from neo-Democratic dogma with the confidence born of her friendship with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I don’t much like the term ‘new Democrat,’ ” she said in a recent speech. But those ties have not always guaranteed her a seat at the banquet of power, nor has it fully cushioned her bumps after some embarrassing mistakes.

What might have been her biggest role, as the voice of health care reform, has been taken over by the Clintons and their war-room general staff. On welfare reform, the policy-drafting power seems to be flowing through her top aides but mostly around her. One top congressional aide compared her role to that of Secretary of State William P. Rogers while Henry A. Kissinger strode the diplomatic stage as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser.

Former university president Shalala was given flunking grades by many for two congressional appearances where she appeared ill-prepared. She had the poor timing to float a value-added tax proposal on April 15; later, she let slip that 40% of Americans would pay more under the Clinton health care reform, setting off a convulsion of White House clarifying and backpedaling. “She was responsible for a few (running) news stories we could have done without,” said one White House aide.

But Shalala has also succeeded in selling a cost-reducing vaccination program, persuaded the White House to spend more on a variety of health programs and apparently fought off White House efforts to fill her staff with appointees she called “amateurs.” Some say she is getting the hang of it.

Labor: Most of Reich’s Ideas on Hold in First Year

Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. Some of his 1972 Yale law classmates thought the well-spoken Reich was more likely to be President than drawling Bill Clinton, and Reich’s abilities have served him well in changing the profile and agenda of his backwater agency. Still, the former Harvard University professor’s ideas have been largely delayed until the second year of the Administration.

And he has caused consternation among Clinton’s economic aides by espousing ideas that conflicted with other plans in the pipeline. Some aides blanched at his talk of a fat payroll tax to finance worker training; his call for a higher, inflation-indexed minimum wage stepped on Administration claims that employer-paid health insurance could substitute for such a hike.

One outside Clinton adviser said that Reich’s White House ratings and access “plummeted” after his espousal of the failed economic stimulus program and plans that could be termed tax-and-spend orthodoxy. But some insiders insist that his light burns bright.

Commerce: Allegation Has Cast Cloud Over Brown

Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown. Promoted early as a star-to-be, lawyer-lobbyist Brown has already broadened the Commerce Department’s export promotion efforts and launched a domestic industrial policy program to foster technology industries.

But Brown’s progress was stopped dead last fall by an allegation that he was paid by a Vietnamese businessman to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. Brown denies the charge, and little has been heard from a federal grand jury in Miami in months.

Although Brown continues to flash his unfailing smile, the White House confessed its worries--an unusual signal during a grand jury investigation. The cloud forced Brown to take a lower profile on the North American Free Trade Agreement, lest he become a target for its foes. More recently he has engaged in a whirlwind of appearances, perhaps aimed at demonstrating that he lives.

People who follow the Commerce Department say its more severe problem is that only 10 of 28 top-level appointees have been confirmed. This, trade lawyers say, has confused outsiders and, by leaving policy-making in civil servants’ hands, tilted policy in some areas in a protectionist direction. “Call it ‘uninventing government,’ ” said one trade expert.

Interior: Babbitt Is a Winner Even Without Triumph

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The White House considers the former Arizona governor a major public relations resource. Yet he has no clear-cut policy triumphs.

On the Northwest logging dispute, Babbitt and the Administration reached a split-the-difference decision, but some environmentalists and the timber industry are already plotting new court challenges. On the feud over mining and grazing fees on public lands, Clinton shot down one Babbitt plan and Western lawmakers fought the second to a standstill in Congress. Babbitt is preparing a third and says, with understatement, that the battle “has been a bit more complicated than we thought.”

Even if his solutions are messy, Babbitt can leave a permanent mark if he can demonstrate that environmental regulation does not have to be a dead-end of conflict and interminable litigation.

Housing: White House Is Sweet on Cisneros

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros. When a homeless woman died across the street from his office last month, the former San Antonio mayor spun it into a publicity blitz.

Cisneros, long a media master, has also slept in a New York homeless shelter and denounced racism in Vidor, Tex., a city notorious for its segregationist attitudes. All this helped shame the White House into giving him $823 million more to fight homelessness. But budgeters will cut other HUD programs and Cisneros has struggled with Congress. His agency, a swamp of corruption in recent years, still needs an overhaul.

Still, the recognition is winning Cisneros important points with Democratic constituencies Clinton needs to keep happy as he presses a more centrist agenda. The housing secretary, who has had a cologne named after him, smells very sweet to the White House just now.

Veterans: So Far, So Good for Jesse Brown

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown. If the Administration fails to ease strains with veterans, it won’t be because Brown hasn’t tried. A former employee of the Disabled American Veterans organization, he has hewed to the veterans groups’ party line on just about every substantial issue, and they are pleased.

But it remains to be seen how prominent he will be in health care reform, and where his loyalties will lie if the Administration wants to cut the agency’s spending.

EPA: Browner Masters the Technical Points

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner. On her 38th birthday recently, Browner received a photo from Clinton of the two of them and other luminaries with a handwritten inscription. Here she was again, it said, explaining technical points to senior officialdom.

Explaining, unfortunately, is about all this former Gore aide has done to date. She has been largely occupied with reorganization and housekeeping chores at a time of budget cuts and growing workloads. But then, it’s tough to stand out when you’re part of a swarm of environmental officials that also includes Babbitt and “Big Green” Gore himself.

Transportation: Pena Allays Fears, but Record Is Thin

Transportation Secretary Federico Pena. Clinton made some aides very uneasy by choosing Pena, the largely untested former Denver mayor, in the final hours of his Cabinet selection process. Those fears have been allayed: “He’s not a disaster,” said one outside adviser.

Yet his record to date is thin: His plan to help the merchant marine was torpedoed; his attempt to unscramble the international airline landing-rights question is stalled; and it was a White House aide, not Pena, who ended the American Airlines flight attendant strike just before the Thanksgiving rush.

Education: Riley Leads Agency Into the Background

Education Secretary Richard W. Riley. Sincere and sophisticated, Riley has led a second-tier agency to near-invisibility. He reformed the college loan program and, with his Carolina-inflected Democratic rhetoric, brought smiles to the education Establishment.

But the agency has been largely ignored by Riley’s friend Clinton and by the outside world as well. Riley has surprised some observers by acquiescing in House Democrats’ efforts to water down school performance standards.

Agriculture: Espy Sets About Plowing a New Path

Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. An early Clinton supporter, Espy has been praised for his efforts in Washington state’s food contamination crisis and Midwest flood relief. He has shifted the agenda a bit, stressing rural development and nutrition programs over traditional farm programs. By contrast, he has been criticized for failing to fight behind the scenes for such causes as the increased food stamp spending that Espy espouses.

Energy: O’Leary Takes On the Agency Itself

Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary. The former utility executive got pummeled in early reviews for her weak grasp of the agency’s work. But she lately has found a useful adversary: the 20,000-employee agency itself. O’Leary has won wide notice for denouncing the department’s Cold War-era secretiveness, including its concealment of plutonium experiments on humans. When Cable News Network’s Larry King said in an interview that O’Leary had been “discovered,” she replied: “It’s about time.”

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Melissa Healy, Norman Kempster, David Lauter, Stanley Meisler, Ronald J. Ostrow, James Risen, Elizabeth Shogren and Karen Tumulty.