Angry Clinton Lashes Out at GOP Critics : Presidency: He charges Republican leaders with sabotaging honest debate over serious problems. Remarks show frustration over Whitewater attacks.

President Clinton lashed out at Republican critics Monday night, charging that they are sabotaging the nation’s need for honest debate at a time when it needs a “genuine conflict of ideas.”

Using language that was among the angriest and most partisan of his presidency, Clinton told some 900 people at a $1,000-per-plate Democratic fund-raising dinner that the country has serious problems.

“Why . . . are we confronted in this Administration with an opposition party that just stands up and says, ‘no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,’ ” Clinton demanded, punctuating each negative with a fist pounded against his lectern, his voice rising in apparent anger and emotion.

“When I was a Democratic governor, and they had the White House, I constantly sought them out, engaged them in debate, offered to work with them on issues from education to welfare reform to crime to you name it,” Clinton said. “I never did them the way they are doing us in Washington, D.C.

“It is wrong, and it is not good for the United States of America.”

Clinton’s remarks reflected the deep frustration within his White House over the way a seemingly incessant stream of allegations surrounding the Whitewater controversy and related matters have blocked Clinton’s ability to communicate his Administration’s agenda.

His words recalled some of the bitterest moments of his presidential campaign--a clear indication of the stress that the events of the last several weeks have put on him, particularly Monday’s resignation of his old friend, Webster Hubbell, the associate attorney general.

The Republicans, Clinton said, were “committed to the politics of personal destruction” and had mounted an “overridingly negative, intensely personal, totally political, devoid-of-principle attack (that is) not good for the country.”

Clinton’s language fit into a pattern in which Democrats loyal to him--including his wife, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--have begun jabbing back at Republican opponents. Those counterattacks, in turn, followed complaints from some in Clinton’s inner circle that the Democrats were doing too little to take Clinton’s critics head on.

Speaking before him on the program here, David Wilhelm, Clinton’s hand-picked Democratic party chairman, also attacked the Republicans, repeating charges he made over the weekend at a party conference that the GOP focus on Whitewater resulted from their inability to counter Clinton’s arguments on issues such as crime and welfare reform.

A few minutes later, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry joked about the role of New York’s Republican Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato in leading the charge against Clinton in the Senate. D’Amato was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee two years ago after allegations that he misused his office. The Ethics Committee report on its investigation of those allegations has remained sealed at D’Amato’s insistence.

Kerry said he was amused that the Republicans had chosen “Al D’Amato as their spokesman on ethics.”

“I guess Bob Packwood was busy,” he said, referring to the Oregon Republican who is under investigation on charges of sexual harassment. Such personal comments by a senator about two other members of the Senate are rare--at least in public.