The Key Question Is Presidential Leadership : Staff changes are a plus, but the buck stops with Clinton

President Clinton has now been forced to acknowledge that his is an Administration in some disarray, too often projecting an image of indecisiveness and even confusion where clarity of purpose is demanded, of indiscipline and even self-indulgence where focus and firmness are essential.

This week’s high-level personnel changes are positive and certainly conscious steps toward trying to impose greater control. What remains to be seen is whether the most vital change of all will now be made: Whether Bill Clinton can radically alter his own management style to provide the kind of rigorous direction that could rescue his presidency from what the polls show to be the increasingly held view that it tends to be weak, uncertain and generally ineffectual.

Leon E. Panetta, who replaces the President’s lifelong chum Thomas (Mack) McLarty as White House chief of staff, is Clinton’s budget director and a well-liked and respected former member of California’s delegation in the House. His very presence in the White House will probably at least double the level of Washington savvy there. Panetta is a popular choice with Congress, and at a minimum his political smarts should spare Clinton from some of the embarrassments his staff has inflicted on him. The question is whether Panetta can do administratively what cries out to be done. Clinton has supposedly given him a free hand. Panetta would be doing his President a favor if he quickly used that authority to elevate the White House staff’s sometimes disturbingly low level of experience.

Replacing Panetta at the Office of Management and Budget will be Alice Rivlin, the self-described “fanatical, card-carrying middle-of-the-roader” who is probably one of the brightest people in Washington. Another change of note will see David Gergen spending half or more of his time at the State Department as special adviser to the secretary of state, as well as to the President.

One hopes that the Gergen move is something more than a gentle easing out of the man who previously worked for three Republican administrations. His office will be on the seventh floor of the State Department, where the big shots work and the big decisions are made, and while abjuring any key policy role he does expect to contribute to policy-making. Gergen has already indicated he wants to leave government by the end of the year. If he does nothing else in the next six months but use his considerable skills to better articulate what this Administration is trying to do in foreign policy, he will have earned his pay.

To do that, however, requires first that this Administration know what it wants in foreign policy, and here certainly the record is not encouraging. Again, it all gets back to the President and his style, to what he’s interested in and to the kind of leadership he’s able to provide.

Immersed--indeed, almost drowning--in the minutiae of his ambitious domestic agenda, Clinton continues to give insufficient attention to foreign affairs except when crises loom, forgetting that it’s half the job. All the policy-polishing skills Gergen might bring to the State Department won’t change that, any more than Panetta’s credentials as a Washington insider can guarantee success for Clinton’s domestic programs. In both cases, as from this Administration’s first day, all depends on firm and focused presidential leadership. That’s what the nation wants to see more of.