White House Awaiting Panetta’s Prescription : Politics: New staff chief is expected to try to substitute discipline for disarray. Will Clinton take the medicine?

Now comes Panetta time.

First there was Betsey Wright, then, briefly, Mickey Kantor, then James Carville. Now it is Leon Panetta’s turn to impose order and discipline on a leader who, for most of his public life, has resisted both.

In two decades of holding public office, Bill Clinton has alternated between two very different styles of management. His preferred style--the one now all too familiar to Americans from his first 18 months in the Oval Office--is loose, non-hierarchical, unstructured to the verge of chaos.

The other, to which he periodically has agreed to submit himself, is more tightly controlled, disciplined and restrictive. Wright, Kantor and Carville, each in different ways, enforced such discipline on Clinton, but only temporarily and only after deep crises that imperiled Clinton’s political future--the loss of the Arkansas governorship after his first term in 1980, the threat of disaster during the New Hampshire primary in February of 1992 and the experience of sinking into third place behind George Bush and Ross Perot later that year.

“Clinton’s thing is that when he’s in trouble, he acts wisely, but it takes trouble to make him wise,” said one aide who has observed the President for several years. “The problem is, when you’re as visible a person as the President of the United States, you can’t afford much of that.”

The question facing Leon E. Panetta, who officially took over last week as Clinton’s new White House chief of staff, is whether the President’s current troubles are once again deep enough to enforce some hard-won wisdom.

Clinton’s own response to that question remains in doubt because the evidence from Panetta’s first days on the job is mixed. Although Panetta has made some changes in White House procedures, he so far has not tipped his hand on personnel moves that many see as a key test of the scope of his authority.

There can be little doubt, however, about the belief among staff members that the White House’s current troubles are severe enough to require major change.

A year and a half into Clinton’s presidency and facing some of their toughest legislative battles, the President’s aides are dispirited, inward-looking and frustrated about an opposition that has given them no quarter, a President whose personal frailties have exposed them to political peril and a staff system that has proved unable so far to consistently deliver timely decisions and effective strategies.

“It’s different from what it was a year ago,” said a White House official--one of more than a dozen senior- and mid-level aides who talked at length, after guarantee of anonymity, about the challenges facing Panetta.

A year ago, during Clinton’s first, disastrous, spring, “there was a feeling of potential free fall. Nobody knew if this presidency could pull it out. After victories on the budget, NAFTA, there was a sense we could make things work. Now there’s a frustration that we find ourselves once again in a difficult situation. It’s like, ‘Why are we back in this place again?’ ” the official said. “It’s like ‘Groundhog Day,’ ” the official added, referring to the movie in which the main character finds himself trapped in a time warp, constantly repeating the same day.

A second official praised Panetta’s predecessor, Thomas (Mack) McLarty, for helping produce a White House of unusual collegiality and a minimal amount of bureaucratic back-stabbing. But, the official conceded, the system has been plagued with “sloppiness that caused us to get less credit than we should.”

“We’ve never really had a long-term strategy,” said a third official. “Clinton’s had a long-term vision that guided him, but the campaign was always a rolling business plan and the Administration has always been day-to-day crisis management . . . . People are frustrated.”

That frustration has only been heightened by recent events--a series of shifting policies on Haiti, an international economic summit in which Clinton offered a new trade proposal only to have it unceremoniously shot down by French opposition, and a still-confusing set of presidential statements last Tuesday concerning his approach to health care reform.

The trade snafu has led to recriminations within the White House from aides saying that poor staff work failed either to detect the French opposition or head it off in time to spare the President a public embarrassment. The health care remarks prompted a wild 48 hours of White House damage-control efforts, accompanied by substantial bafflement on the part of Clinton’s aides about whether their leader was floating a trial balloon without telling anyone or just succumbing to a moment of undisciplined thinking out loud.

Into this mix steps Panetta, a one-time Republican and Richard Nixon Administration official who lost his job in Nixon’s Department of Health, Education and Welfare because of his advocacy of civil rights and went on to be a highly regarded Democratic congressman.

Panetta, 56, served eight terms in Congress for a district centered on Monterey. His expertise on the causes and potential cures for the federal deficit brought him to the attention of Clinton, who in 1992 was searching for the right person to head the Office of Management and Budget.

Now he faces even greater challenges with a mandate to change Clinton’s White House. Panetta’s ability in that regard will be helped by the existing frustration on the staff level. But two other forces push in the other direction.

One force is Clinton’s own instinctive resistance to a strongly centralized staff system. Longtime friends and associates attribute that resistance to several factors. Most important, they say, while Clinton does not have a deep preference for disorder, he likes the fact that a decentralized system means only he knows all the cards in play at any given time.

“He’s not a 100% control freak who feels he needs to run absolutely everything, and he’s learning as he goes along, but he is 60% or 70% or 80%,” one official said.

In addition, Clinton tends to push back against any system that he feels presents him with too few options, and he likes to hear from many different advisers before deciding which option he will choose. When aides tried in the past to limit the number of officials invited to White House meetings, Clinton has agreed in theory, only to later ask, sometimes angrily, why one or another adviser was not present.

Moreover, any move to streamline the staff and to produce the sort of “clear lines of authority” Panetta has publicly spoken of would inevitably reduce the freedom to roam currently enjoyed by Clinton’s top aides, including his counselor, Bruce Lindsey; his senior adviser, George Stephanopoulos, Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes and economic policy chief Robert E. Rubin.

The existence of so many overlapping and loosely defined portfolios has often led to confusion about where, exactly, the White House stands on a given issue, exasperating members of Congress and complicating legislative negotiations. Moreover, the absence of clear lines has allowed the staff to cluster around whatever issue was hottest at the moment, leaving no one to watch other areas until they suddenly burst into flames.

“We have a sense that everyone at the top gets involved in every decision,” said a mid-level aide. “We just keep packing more people into the top of the triangle as senior advisers and counselors.

“You don’t necessarily have to fire people or demote them, but you do have to narrow their portfolios a bit,” the aide added. “It’s easy in a campaign to have an inner circle that meets on every issue, but believe it or not, running the federal government is bigger and more complex, with more people knocking at the door.”

Said another frustrated official: “Just getting people all to report to the same place would be a significant accomplishment.”

So far, the evidence is mixed on the question of whether Clinton is ready to abandon the personal control he derives from a loose staff system and to allow Panetta to play the role assigned to him.

Panetta has taken several important early actions. Last week, for example, he intervened in stalled negotiations over the crime bill, telling members of the Congressional Black Caucus that the White House would not support their insistence that the bill include a provision allowing Death Row inmates to challenge their sentences by using statistical evidence of racial discrimination. Before Panetta’s arrival, Congress had been unable to get a clear answer from the Administration on the issue as different groups of Clinton aides held often-conflicting negotiations with opposing groups in Congress.

Panetta’s willingness to get involved on that issue cheered many members of the staff. McLarty has good relations with many in Congress, but “pretty much confined himself to economic stuff and business issues like NAFTA,” one official said. “Leon’s likely to be a more active congressional negotiator across a broader range of issues.”

In addition, added another official, “everyone loves Mack, but people would tear their hair out because he wouldn’t pull the trigger, or if he pulled it, it wouldn’t stay pulled.” Panetta, by contrast, “seems to be willing to make decisions stick.”

Panetta also has made several symbolically important changes in White House routine. He has, for example, issued an order requiring that all White House hiring and payroll decisions be cleared by the chief of staff’s office--authority that McLarty surprisingly did not demand. He also instituted a 7:30 a.m. meeting for the most senior White House staff members--a move that has caused grumbling among those who are excluded but is seen by others as a first step toward creating a hierarchy.

By contrast with meetings in McLarty’s era, Panetta’s sessions are “crisper, more agenda-oriented,” a senior official said. “Panetta comes out at 8:15 with a plan.”

Panetta “is using the 7:30 meeting as a setup to make decisions about what action needs to happen at the presidential level, and then isolating one person responsible for moving the ball forward,” another senior official said. “That sends a double message,” the official said: “Somebody’s in charge, and everybody can’t play.”

That official also pointed to another action by the new chief of staff that has taken on considerable symbolic significance within the always status-conscious White House: pressing members of the National Security Council staff to provide more detailed answers to questions about their plans for handling foreign policy problems.

“The NSC sort of went its own way in prior days. It was less integrated into the overall game plan,” the senior official said. Many White House aides see the NSC staff, which has been battered by criticism of Clinton’s foreign policy, as increasingly insular and isolated from the political realities Clinton faces.

But the real test of Panetta’s authority, many White House aides and others agree, will come when he begins the personnel shake-ups that he has broadly hinted will take place--moves that almost inevitably will reduce the authority of some aides whose loyalty to Clinton goes back to his campaign.

With no decisions yet announced, the White House has been awash in rumors--most directed at the White House offices in charge of communications, scheduling and advance and political operations. One widely circulated rumor, for example, has John Emerson, a former Los Angeles deputy city attorney who has handled a number of assignments for Clinton, taking over the political office. Another rumor has Panetta bringing in a high-profile outside figure to replace communications director Mark D. Gearan, shifting Gearan to another high-level post.

The lack of resolution has heightened the anxiety level on the staff and exacerbated longstanding divisions between the core of aides who labored with Clinton through the sometimes dismal days of the campaign and those--generally older officials--who came on board only after Clinton’s election. With the ascendance of Panetta, who had never even met Clinton before the election, those in the latter group now hope to see the campaign influence reduced.

“I’ve long felt the White House is too insular, with the old campaign group talking to each other and no one else,” said one official who falls into the late-arriving camp. “Some of those people who’ve been getting a free ride because they were early and active in the campaign will now be getting a little more scrutiny.”

Many White House officials had expected, perhaps unrealistically, that Panetta would make major personnel changes immediately after Clinton returned from the economic summit in Europe earlier this month or, at the latest, by the end of his first week.

The fact that those widely heralded personnel changes have not yet taken place has disturbed some White House officials--some because they worry about a long, drawn-out process that could become highly disruptive; others because they fear the delay signals back-sliding on Clinton’s willingness to give Panetta a free hand.

Officials close to Panetta discount the need to act quickly or to make major changes in personnel, as opposed to changes in the White House process. “The reality is you guys aren’t going to walk away and say he’s done a great job because of the size of the pile of scalps outside his door,” one such official said. “If he hangs a lot of folks and things still don’t go well, you’ll just say he croaked the wrong people.”

Panetta, said another aide, is acting “deliberately and carefully.”

“He’s said repeatedly that any such changes would be made as quickly as possible. That’s what’s happening,” the aide said.

But those who think more dramatic action is needed warn that the new chief risks losing an important early opportunity. “It embarrasses the President and Leon if it doesn’t get done soon. It makes it look like he’s objecting to what Leon’s proposing or else that he’s slow to make painful decisions,” one aide said. “People are likely to conclude that he’s reluctant to allow Leon to change some people who may have been very loyal.”

“People are expecting a lot from Panetta,” another official said. “There’s going to be a willingness to accept decisions simply because they are decisions, even if you don’t like them. That will dissipate over time. He should take advantage of it while it’s there.”