POLITICS : Foreign Policy Missteps Wound Clinton’s Standing at Home : Attacks on the President’s performance are coming from across the political spectrum. A tangle of global dilemmas offers little hope for relief.

Bill Clinton, who has staked his presidency on achieving bold domestic policy goals, suddenly appears to be jeopardizing his political future with his handling of U.S. foreign policy.

The evidence is accumulating: Some of Clinton’s poll ratings are wilting; Republicans--including former President George Bush and GOP presidential prospects for 1996--are pounding him and discontent is spreading on Capitol Hill.

And with foreign policy dilemmas plaguing him around the globe, stretching from Haiti to Bosnia to North Korea and China, the future offers the President little hope for relief.

Amid preparations for Clinton’s trip to Europe next week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-day and to bolster strained relationships with Western allies, some advisers wonder whether the President might have underestimated the importance of foreign policy while he was lavishing attention on domestic issues.

“I can envision a Republican candidate in 1996, someone like (former Defense Secretary) Dick Cheney or (former Secretary of State) Jim Baker, who campaigns on the slogan: ‘It’s foreign policy, stupid,’ ” fretted a veteran of Clinton’s 1992 campaign.

Indeed, the Republicans are already on the attack. “Our leadership around the world is being eroded by a stop-and-start policy of hesitancy,” Bush said at a GOP fund-raiser May 17 in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), a potential presidential contender in 1996, mocked Clinton’s recent 90-minute televised press conference on international affairs. “You shouldn’t have to have a television show with someone scripting the answers to demonstrate what you know about leadership,” Dole said at a party rally in Atlanta.

The basic grievance against Clinton is this: In dealing with an array of problems abroad, such as the bloody conflict in Bosnia, the intransigence of the military regime in Haiti, the nuclear threat from North Korea and human rights violations in China, he seems to have talked loudly but carried a small stick.

“I continue to look for new solutions,” the President has said in his own defense. His supporters blame his difficulties on the turbulent state of post-Cold War diplomacy, which has forced him to sail on uncharted seas. While some Americans are urging him to steer clear of foreign crises, others are demanding stronger action.

“You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” argued Democratic National Committee Chairman David Wilhelm. “These are tough and difficult situations.”

“The President is getting a bad rap,” said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), who contends that Clinton does not get the credit that he deserves for winning congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Likening present conditions to the chaotic years after World War II, Foley noted that it took President Harry S. Truman nearly two years to develop policies for dealing with the Soviet Union.

But some analysts warn that Clinton’s penchant for wheeling and dealing--contrasted with Truman’s characteristic bluntness and decisiveness--can backfire in foreign policy.

“In foreign policy, it’s important to present a firm image,” said Princeton University presidential scholar Fred Greenstein. “With Clinton, it’s like globs of mercury; he’s all over the place.”

Clinton’s task is not an easy one. “In the post-Cold War era, no one knows what foreign policy ought to be,” conceded Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official in the Jimmy Carter Administration. Gelb now serves as president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yet Clinton’s critics argue that the President is making the job more difficult with his inconsistencies.

“You can’t go Chinese menu week by week on foreign policy and expect the American people to support you,” said Hodding Carter III, who was spokesman for the State Department during the Carter Administration.

Clinton’s policies are drawing fire across the political spectrum. From the right, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) scoffs at Clinton’s initiative for dealing with the potential flood of refugees from Haiti by establishing seaborne processing centers.

“There is a level of sloppiness about this Administration that is kind of scary,” the conservative Georgia congressman said.

From the left, Maurice Paprin, head of the liberal-oriented Fund for New Priorities, left a recent White House briefing convinced that U.S. policy toward Haiti is “as unclear and muddy as it was before.”

The President seemingly raised the political stakes for his Haiti policies recently when he offered a detailed justification for U.S. invasion of that strife-torn island nation if economic sanctions do not force the military government from office.

But if the Haitian regime stands firm despite the sanctions, Clinton will have to risk launching a military assault with unforeseeable consequences or face intensified complaints that he lacks the will to manage foreign policy.

Even longtime allies of the President, such as Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), who chairs the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist group that helped propel Clinton to the presidency, have joined the disapproving chorus.

“We have conducted ourselves abroad with an unsteady hand,” McCurdy said in an address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco last month. “In Bosnia, blustery rhetoric faded into reluctant diplomacy. . . . On North Korea, we have been anything but decisive.”

Republicans warn that shifting positions on current problems can create even more serious troubles in the future. “To the extent that you use up your credibility, then when you get into a real crisis you’ll pay the price,” former Defense Secretary Cheney told members of the National Retail Federation here earlier this month.

Clinton is already paying a political price for the controversies surrounding his foreign policy, according to recent polls. Only 40% of those interviewed in a Washington Post-ABC News survey released last week approved of his handling of foreign policy, against 53% who disapproved. The negative showing on foreign policy apparently contributed to lowering the President’s overall approval rating to 51%, from 57% in March.

“Foreign policy is not just about foreign affairs, it’s also an opportunity for the President to display leadership capabilities in the one arena in which he can do so with fewest challenges,” said Everett Carll Ladd, director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. “We have loads of evidence that people form impressions of presidents by what they see of them on the world stage.”

Underscoring Clinton’s difficulties abroad, and conceivably complicating them, are increasing signs of congressional restlessness with his leadership on foreign affairs. The most striking example is a Senate vote two weeks ago for an amendment ordering the President to unilaterally lift the United Nations-imposed embargo on selling arms to Bosnia, even if America’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies do not agree.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees spending on foreign aid, predicted more congressional involvement in foreign affairs on such issues as curbing development of North Korea’s nuclear capability and granting “most favored nation” trade status to China.

“All of a sudden,” McConnell said, “an issue the President has no interest in, and he thinks the American people aren’t interested in, is becoming a major political liability.”

A Low Point in Poll

Polls indicate President Clinton’s ratings on foreign affairs are now at a record low. But foreign affairs is still not a priority issue for most Americans. Approve: 43% Disapprove: 46% Don’t know: 11% *

Past Foreign Policy Ratings

Jan. ’94 Sept. ’93 Feb. ’93 Approve 51% 50% 44% Disapprove 33% 32% 17% Don’t know 16% 18% 39%

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Ranking With Other Issues

What is the most important problem facing the country today? (two responses accepted) Crime/drugs/violence: 51% Other social problems: 44% Economy: 35% Morality/values: 10% Foreign affairs: 3% Source: Los Angeles Times nationwide polls of adults. Most recent figures from an April 16-19 survey.