NEWS ANALYSIS : Shuffle May Not End Clinton Losing Streak

Baseball has a ritual: When the team hits the skids, fire the manager. Washington’s folkways demand much the same thing. Occasionally it works.

President Clinton’s decision to shove aside his longtime friend, White House Chief of Staff Thomas (Mack) McLarty, and replace him with Budget Director Leon E. Panetta--a man Clinton barely knew until after his election--constituted a dramatic public admission of what his advisers had privately conceded for weeks: Clinton is on a losing streak and needs to start winning fast.

With his foreign policy under attack, his health reform plan mired in Congress and his poll ratings lackluster at best, Clinton faces problems that, in the view of most Washington insiders, would be helped by giving the top White House job to Washington insider Panetta.

But because Clinton’s problems go far beyond his sometimes disorganized staff structure--and stem in large measure from his own lack of decision-making discipline--the help may be limited.

For Clinton, the most positive aspect of the change simply may be that it happened at all. For months, indeed since the first month of the Administration, Washington’s semi-permanent Establishment--members of Congress, lobbyists, party officials, the news media and the like--have insisted that McLarty was wrong for the job and would have to be replaced.

Traditionally, when presidents accede to the demands of conventional wisdom, they reap at least a temporary benefit--being hailed for the wisdom of doing what the Establishment had counseled.

Last year, for example, Clinton enjoyed a crucial respite from a barrage of troubles when he named David Gergen as White House counselor. White House aides hope that a similar effect will help them once again.

“It changes the story line,” said one senior official. “That’s always one of the benefits of doing something like this.”

Along with that benefit, however, come some drawbacks. Although Panetta forged a good working relationship with Clinton during a rocky year and a half in which he filled one of the Administration’s most difficult jobs, he does not have the sort of personal relationship with the President that McLarty had.

That could be a potentially major problem for two reasons. For one, the Administration’s informal style means that personal ties often matter more than formal organization charts.

And perhaps more important, many of the problems facing the White House involve the President’s own managerial weaknesses--particularly his reluctance to bring issues to decisions and to submit himself to the disciplines of other people’s deadlines.

“You can only do so much to fix the problems that are already out there,” said Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is in charge of the Democrats’ strategy for this year’s mid-term congressional elections.

“The key is (whether) the President is willing to make the kind of adjustment in his management style that will allow Leon to perform at the level he is capable of,” Fazio said. The changes, he said, present for Clinton “an opportunity to pull back a bit . . . change his presidential style some. I hope he’ll take the opportunity.”

Panetta faces a second limiting reality as well. No chief of staff can do much to alter the cruel political problem Clinton faces--the mismatch between his ambitious domestic agenda and his narrow base of public support.

Clinton’s entire presidency is an exercise in swimming upstream--convincing a skeptical nation and a tentative Congress to agree to a more active role for government in handling major national problems. Simply changing the occupant of the corner office in the West Wing will not make that task any easier.

Within that context, however, Clinton aides, congressional Democrats and Democratic operatives pointed to several major strengths that Panetta brings to the new job, some of which McLarty lacked.

First, Panetta is well-liked by Clinton’s aides and members of Congress. Because the changeover has been handled smoothly, without the long-drawn agonies that marked the departures of John H. Sununu from the office in the George Bush White House or Donald T. Regan in the Ronald Reagan White House, Panetta will begin work without the chaos that their successors inherited.

In addition, after 15 years in Congress and 17 months as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Panetta knows the ins and outs of both the substance and politics of Washington policy-making.

He plays well on television--an important skill for the chief of staff, whose job includes being a public advocate for the Administration.

And he has longstanding friendships on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House, that may help smooth the Administration’s sometimes-rocky relations with the Democratic majority.

“He knows Washington and, God knows, he knows Congress,” said one Clinton adviser. “He’s articulate and can speak publicly. All that helps.”

Most important, “the White House has been missing a first-class negotiator other than her and him,” the adviser said, referring to the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. “You need somebody up there that people can sit down with and they know they’re talking to the President.”

While McLarty had the President’s confidence, he often proved unable to fill that role because people negotiating with him could not be certain that other members of the White House staff would not undercut him, the adviser said.

“It was a complicated operation. People here were never sure who to call,” said Rep. Timothy J. Penny (D-Minn.). When Congress members asked something of McLarty, he always had to check with Panetta or Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen before answering, Penny added.

A senior congressional committee chairman concurred. “They never gave McLarty the authority he needed,” he said.

Panetta, aides said, had insisted as part of taking the job that Clinton agree to allow him to clean up the often-tangled lines of authority and communication at the White House. Those aides pointed to David Gergen’s departure from the White House for a State Department job as an example of the more streamlined operation Panetta hopes to achieve. “It’s one less free rider,” the Clinton adviser said.

Over the longer term, Clinton aides hope that Panetta will bring a firmer management style to the loosely run White House. “He can make decisions,” said a White House official who has worked closely with both Panetta and McLarty.

Another senior White House aide noted Panetta’s performance last summer, when he helped convince Clinton that he could not possibly pursue the budget, health care and the North American Free Trade Agreement at the same time.

Panetta also played a key role in forcing Clinton to confront the reality that the deficit-reduction plan he had pushed through Congress in his first year would not allow enough money to cover all the new domestic spending Clinton wanted. With mixed success, he pushed Clinton to establish priorities, a move that allowed him to rescue money for at least some of the programs in Congress.

“He’s uniquely qualified to sort out in a complex legislative agenda what should come first, what has a chance of passage and what needs to be done when,” said the senior aide. “He knows the dynamics of every committee and every faction on the Hill.”

Times staff writer Karen Tumulty contributed to this story.