Gergen Draws Kudos and Complaints in White House : Advisers: Even foes acknowledge his media skills, but some colleagues say he lacks commitment to the Clinton agenda.

In the eight months since David Gergen, the former Republican media adviser turned high-paid pundit, joined the Democratic White House, he has become one of President Clinton’s best-known assistants and has earned a reputation for helping turn around Clinton’s popularity.

Inside the White House, however, Gergen has remained a controversial figure.

Even his opponents concede his media savvy and say he has helped Clinton, particularly by helping to reverse a bunker mentality during his first few weeks on the job.

But Gergen also draws many complaints. And in an ironic twist, many of them echo those lodged against him a decade ago when he served a very different President--Ronald Reagan.

Then, Gergen, who describes himself as a centrist, lacked conservative rigor in the eyes of his Reaganite colleagues. Now, in the eyes of many Clinton aides, he lacks commitment to the new Administration’s more liberal agenda.

Take health care reform. Although the issue is the center of Clinton’s domestic agenda, Gergen has played less of a role than on other subjects--such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, for which he pushed hard.

During the weeks leading up to Clinton’s State of the Union speech, Gergen opposed the idea that Clinton would threaten to veto any bill that did not meet his bottom line of universal coverage--a proposal ardently pushed by many health care reform advocates within the White House.

Some White House aides argue that Gergen’s lower profile on the issue stems from a lack of commitment to it. Gergen “doesn’t really believe in it,” said one.

Gergen declined to discuss such questions, saying in an interview that he did not want to participate in any story that resembled a profile of him.

“The last thing I want is another profile,” he said. “I’m profiled out.”

Others said the ideological antipathy that some Democratic stalwarts in the White House have toward Gergen has blinded them to his effectiveness.

“A lot of people who didn’t like him from the outset are always looking for things” on which to fault him, said domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed, who is one of Clinton’s more conservative aides.

Despite his reputation as primarily an image-shaper, Gergen has been deeply involved in several policy issues for Clinton. In addition to the trade agreement, he also had a high-profile role on anti-crime legislation.

Even Gergen supporters concede that his personal style sometimes creates problems--again an echo from his Reagan days. In the Reagan White House, Gergen’s colleagues derisively dubbed him “assistant to the President for the New York Times” because of his reputation for leaking stories to that newspaper and other journalists.

Similarly, a Clinton White House aide complained: “I’d say there’s a consistent pattern of compulsively taking credit” for things in talks with reporters, as well as criticizing other people to avoid blame.

A recent case involves Defense Secretary-designate Bobby Ray Inman, who withdrew his nomination during a press conference in which he accused the media of engaging in “McCarthyism.”

Afterward, reporters said, Gergen told journalists on background that Inman had been pushed for the job by Ambassador-at-Large Strobe Talbott. Talbott had been involved in Inman’s selection, but so was Gergen, White House officials said.

Recently, many in the White House have speculated that Gergen was about to leave to become Washington bureau chief for ABC News. Those rumors, network sources said privately, are false.

ABC News did have serious discussions with Gergen before he joined the White House last June, several network sources said, but those discussions ended then, and the network has not discussed the job with him since.