Clinton Rethinking Staff for Reelection Bid, Officials Say : Politics: New aides may supplant directors of ’92 campaign. President is described as ‘madder than hell.’

Angry and frustrated over his political reversals and nervous about his prospects in 1996, President Clinton is devising a reelection campaign plan that diminishes the role of the high-profile political consultants who guided his 1992 race, according to senior White House and Democratic Party officials.

In wide-ranging conversations with Democratic leaders and consultants over the last few weeks, Clinton has expressed deep concern about his precarious political standing and sharp disappointment with the mid-term Democratic campaign message that was heavily influenced by pollster Stanley B. Greenberg and media consultant Mandy Grunwald. He also has expressed anger over the huge sums spent by the Democratic National Committee in the unsuccessful Nov. 8 election effort--including large payments to his 1992 consultants.

“He’s madder than hell,” said one highly placed Democrat recently consulted by Clinton. “The President is now his own campaign manager. He’s had it with people telling him how to do it. He’s taking charge.”

One sign of the new era is that Clinton is drawing up plans to dilute the influence of Greenberg and Grunwald by bringing a wider range of political consultants into the 1996 effort, senior White House officials said. While the two consultants would remain involved, sources said, they would not be granted the virtually complete control over polling and television advertising that they exercised in 1992--and over Democratic Party efforts in support of Clinton the last two years.

“We’re going to spread it out,” one senior White House official said about the polling operation. “We don’t want to be locked into one person.”

“The President does want more voices involved, and that will be more formalized,” said another senior White House aide.

Clinton’s apparent cooling toward the circle of political advisers who carried him to the White House underscores his anxiety and confusion about the dangerous political situation in which he finds himself halfway through his term.

But some supporters of Greenberg and Grunwald said that Clinton’s disenchantment with his consultants has overtones of a search for scapegoats and a reluctance to confront his own complicity in the Democratic Dunkirk at the polls Nov. 8.

Further, some insiders said that they are concerned that Clinton’s hunger for a broader range of political advice and greater personal control of decisions portends a diffuse and disorganized campaign. They said that they fear competing power centers might be created in the White House and the reelection committee, which would battle for authority, with decisions constantly being reconsidered by the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Such administrative confusion snarled the first months of Clinton’s 1992 campaign before adviser James Carville effectively brought central control to the effort early that summer.

Clinton has stoked the fears of these aides through long delays in filling key political positions at the Democratic National Committee, the White House and his reelection committee.

While the White House appears to want Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd to serve as chairman of the party committee, it continues to send mixed signals about who will be named to chair Clinton’s reelection effort. As recently as late last week, senior White House officials said that they expected Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, a former party chairman, to get the top campaign position.

But with Brown reluctant to surrender his Cabinet post and congressional Republicans threatening renewed hearings into his business dealings, some well-placed Democrats said that the Administration may put off that decision, perhaps for months.

“What they are talking about is doing nothing” until mid-1995, said one highly placed Democrat in regular contact with the White House. “They will probably go through the hearings and wait and see what happens before they do that.”

A senior White House official involved in the discussions confirmed that the President is unlikely to name a reelection chairman soon but suggested different reasons for delay: “A lot of the talk on Brown was premature. The President has been focusing on the DNC (chairman) and has not given a lot of time and thought to the reelection. So I wouldn’t draw any conclusions one way or the other on Ron Brown.”

White House aides acknowledged that options other than Brown are not readily apparent. One likely alternative, Mickey Kantor, who was chairman of Clinton’s 1992 campaign, told staff members Monday that he plans to remain in his position as U.S. trade representative.

While the White House mulls over the top campaign position, it is also having difficulty determining who will fill key positions below the chairman. While it is generally assumed that Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes will play a key role in coordinating the campaign from the White House, ethics rules are complicating the process of putting officials into the top campaign jobs.

Under federal ethics laws, senior White House officials who leave office cannot communicate with their former colleagues for one year. That prohibition makes it difficult for officials--such as Deputy Communications Director Rahm Emanuel, who has been discussed as a possible campaign manager--to take positions in the campaign.

Officials cautioned that all of these decisions are in flux as Clinton searches for a strategy--and a team--that can chart a path out of the political ditch into which he has stumbled halfway through his term. Even after the Oval Office speech last week touted as an effort to rejuvenate his presidency, a Gallup Organization Inc., poll found that 53% of Americans disapprove of Clinton’s performance. An array of recent surveys have found him trailing Republican opponents, sometimes badly, in hypothetical 1996 matchups.

“He is clearly worried,” said the Democrat recently consulted by the President.

But in recent meetings, Clinton also has expressed frequently intense anger at his communications and political advisers, whom he portrays as failing to sell his accomplishments or develop a message to blunt the Republican gains in 1994.

He has pointedly second-guessed the mid-term Democratic campaign strategy. In the campaign’s last weeks, Democrats effectively made the election a national choice between Clinton’s economic plan and the House Republican “contract with America,” which Democrats portrayed as a return to the economics of former President Ronald Reagan.

That approach divided Democratic strategists during the fall, with Greenberg and Grunwald strongly arguing for the “referendum on Reaganomics” approach that eventually dominated the party message. Some Democrats now consider the strategy to have contributed to the debacle.

In these meetings, several sources said, Clinton also has expressed surprisingly sharp irritation with the large sums Greenberg, Grunwald, and the firm of Carville and Paul Begala--the two other key advisers from 1992--have received as consultants to the Democratic National Committee. “Oh boy, are they unhappy with that,” said one Democrat, referring to both Clinton and the First Lady.

Federal Election Commission figures show that from January, 1993, through the end of November, the committee has paid almost $3.5 million to Greenberg’s firm for polling, more than $1 million to Grunwald’s firm for media consulting, and $288,000 to Carville and Begala for general consulting.

Those sums, which constitute nearly 8% of total committee expenditures over the period, have raised even more eyebrows in the White House because of the large debt at the committee after the election. Despite raising a record $41 million in 1994, the DNC reported in its most recent FEC filing a debt of $2.4 million that insiders say is likely to climb to $5 million by year’s end.

Begala and Carville appear to have drawn less of Clinton’s ire, though some insiders said that their role already has diminished under White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta, who has clashed with Begala in the past.

While Clinton is contemplating a lesser role for Greenberg and Grunwald, there is no sign that he would sever relations with them. With White House approval, the Democratic committee has hired Greenberg to begin polling research for the State of the Union Address next month. Grunwald remains part of a group that advises the First Lady.

Indeed, some officials portrayed the shifting standing of the two consultants as only a minor modification of the arrangements in the campaign and the last two years.

Times staff writers Alan C. Miller and Dwight Morris contributed to this story.