WASHINGTON INSIGHT

PLAYING THE ANGLES: In the race to succeed outgoing Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, California’s Democratic senators have taken different roads--reflecting their respective political circumstances. Sen. Barbara Boxer wasted no time jumping on the bandwagon of Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), who chairs the Budget Committee on which Boxer sits. She is among a handful of senators plotting strategy for Sasser’s battle with Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Boxer figures to win Sasser’s gratitude--presumably measured in support for her legislation, committee assignments and other chits--whether he becomes the Senate leader or remains Budget Committee chairman. . . . Sen. Dianne Feinstein, meanwhile, has remained on the sidelines--pending her reelection bid. Hoping to win her vote when the Senate leadership election is held next year, Sasser and Daschle both are expected to help raise money for Feinstein this fall.

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TOBACCO WARS: Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David A. Kessler has taken his anti-smoking campaign to a new, more personal level. Knowing that most of the nation’s 48 million smokers got hooked in their youth, he appeared last week before his daughter’s sixth-grade English class to lecture on the dangers of cigarettes. Perhaps convinced, the students have proposed a commercial, featuring pieces of fruit shunning a smoking apple, that they plan to submit to Kessler for use in a future FDA campaign.

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IMAGE CONSCIOUS: Former Democratic Party Chairman Robert S. Strauss says President Clinton’s aides have been missing a chance to boost their boss’s image. Strauss told reporters that whenever President George Bush was photographed playing golf, he made certain Secretary of State James A. Baker III or National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft was in the shot too--making it appear they were conferring on official business. “You never see that with Clinton when he’s playing golf,” Strauss said.

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NOT READY FOR CRIME TIME: Efforts to produce a final anti-crime bill are hung up in a House-Senate negotiating committee. Insiders say that’s because crusty Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) is dragging his boot heels, hoping to keep an assault weapon ban out of the final product. The Senate included the ban in its version of the bill, and the House passed separate legislation over Brooks’ objections. Lawmakers had hoped to have the bill to Clinton by the Memorial Day recess. Now, it may not be born until the Fourth of July.

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SILENCE IS GOLDEN: Officials say National Security Council aide Jenonne Walker is in line for one of the most coveted posts in the foreign service: U.S. ambassador in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. Walker, a former foreign service officer, publicly called for U.S. military intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, when she was a leading Democratic critic of Bush’s policy on the former Yugoslavia. Since joining the NSC last year, she has refused to say whether she still holds that view.

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H. ROSS RENO? Perhaps a secret student of chart-happy billionaire Ross Perot, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has taken to using visual aids in her briefing sessions. Last week, she sat behind a basket filled with plastic picnic ware to announce a legal attack by the Justice Department on an alleged price-fixing scheme in the multimillion-dollar disposable dinnerware industry. “I have always been a little bit reluctant to do visual things,” she said. “But I am amazed at how people pick up on this.”