PERSPECTIVE ON GOVERNING : SOS for the Clinton Presidency : The First Couple need a wrenching change in how they operate, starting with a White House cleaning.

A wrong turn or two in the days immediately ahead could effectively end the Clinton presidency. Fortunately for the Clintons and for the country, there are things that can be done to avert such a collapse. But they will involve a wrenching change in the Clintons’ operating style and the people around them.

* Get self-promoting airheads out of the White House and invite mature people in. As Bob Woodward’s new book about the White House policy processes and economic decision-making makes clear, the President has high intelligence and a sense of policy. So do people such as Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and White House economic aides Bob Rubin, Leon Panetta and Alice Rivlin. But, as Woodward’s “The Agenda” also makes clear, the Clinton White House is over-populated with polling/campaign-minded apparatchiks participating in important policy discussions. The same people, the book demonstrates, have repaid the President’s generosity by bad-mouthing him and some of his senior appointees and by leaking internal memos to a journalist so as to burnish their own egos at their President’s ultimate expense. (Plus, their memos disclose, their input is silly and superficial). If these lightweights are allowed to hang around any longer, the conclusion will be that the President and First Lady prefer raw courtiership to heavier company.

Just as policy grown-ups are in short supply in the White House, so are they kept in the rear ranks of the President’s kitchen cabinet. His most regularly consulted close outside advisers are money-raisers and political operators without Executive Branch policy experience rather than respected former Cabinet members, diplomats or wise older-generation congressional leaders. The President needs to reach for advisers more, not less, experienced and knowledgeable than himself.

* Buckle down on foreign policy, weigh options carefully and stop talking carelessly. The President has gotten himself and the country in trouble by carelessly issuing his student generation’s “we demand” ultimatums--unenforceable ones, at that--in the directions of Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, China and Japan on a variety of security and economic issues. Now, with North Korea, he must be sure that careless talk and a less-than-exacting weighing of options are put aside lest we push ourselves and Asian nations into a second Korean war. The countries in the region whose lives and resources are at stake are hardly eager to plunge forward with tough talk, then sanctions, then possible confrontations of a more dangerous nature.

The United States became entrapped in Vietnam--the war most formative in the thinking of the President and his key advisers--in part because we viewed our adversaries there through our accustomed American prism. Before another word is said or action taken toward North Korea, the President needs to call in present and former policy-makers, confer with leaders of the region, consult senior congressional leaders and above all spend uninterrupted time with area specialists who understand the mind set of Kim II Sung and those around him. This is not a place where ultimatums can be made and then abandoned. Nor is it a place to demonstrate “toughness” at the cost of other people’s lives when other options remain open.

* Think and act seriously about health-care reform. The President’s proposed Health Security Act is a far cry from the “managed competition” reform he proposed in the 1992 campaign. In its present form it is a Rube Goldbergian, top-down nightmare of a scheme promising greatly expanded benefits that cannot remotely be financed by the means the Administration suggests. Voters fear it not because of misrepresentations by “political enemies,” as the Administration alleges, but because common sense tells them it doesn’t add up and they’re afraid it will wreck the good things about the current system.

The Administration, tacitly recognizing the situation, has left health-care reform in the hands of responsible senior Democrats in the Congress. But it cannot wholly walk away from the enterprise. The balance of power on the issue lies with moderate Senate Republicans such as John Chafee and David Durenberger who want a reasonable bill to pass. The President needs to send a message to them now--and to Democrats trying to work with them--that this is not a sharp-edged partisan issue and that a bipartisan compromise is what he wants. Otherwise, with lines and tempers hardening, the whole enterprise could be lost within 30 days, dealing the President a severe political blow. If health-care reform does not pass in 1994, it will not pass in this presidential term, given likely GOP gains in congressional elections this fall.

* Stop asserting that “we did nothing wrong” in Arkansas. Meet the Whitewater and womanizing charges with dignity, and don’t be distracted. Few who have followed their careers doubt that the President and First Lady could have misbehaved in one or more ways during their time in Arkansas. But few really care, so long as the First Couple appear to be working hard and conducting themselves well. The charges, and the legal and other processes surrounding them, will continue to take a punishing toll, but this need not destroy the Clintons if they demonstrate gravity in their substantive work, and if the White House will stop issuing implausible and constantly shifting explanations and denials about old business.

Bill Clinton is an instinctive politician and communicator. Hillary Rodham Clinton can be remembered as a groundbreaking First Lady who assumed important new roles and responsibilities. Despite their current troubles, a successful term remains in reach. But not unless they get real in a hurry.