Winning Friends by Looking Presidential : Clinton’s image improves along with his displays of resolve

Clinton redux. The president, who only rarely during his nearly three years in the White House has enjoyed approval ratings higher than the 43% of the vote by which he was elected, appears to be growing, however modestly, in public esteem. A big reason among several is that he has begun to look--and act--more presidential, which is to say he has begun firmly to wield some of the powers of the office.

Accused often, and with reason, of indecisiveness and lacking a governing philosophy he truly believes in, the president is showing some strong signs of leadership and resolve. Samuel Johnson famously noted that “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates the mind wonderfully.” When a sitting president faces reelection in less than a year it has the same profound focusing effect.

The irony, of course, is that Clinton has most demonstratively donned the mantle of leadership with an issue that is likely even in the best of circumstances to win him few electoral points. The president’s speech last week laying out his reasons for sending more than 20,000 American troops to help police the partition of Bosnia, whatever one might think of the wisdom of that intervention, rang out with commitment to retaining America’s leadership in the North Atlantic alliance and its support for humane values throughout the world. If the Bosnia venture goes well, few Americans will bother to sing Clinton’s praises. If it goes poorly, he and he alone will be held to political account.

He of course knows all this. That he is pressing ahead, and apparently bringing a reluctant Congress along with him, is evidence of a readiness to assert firm leadership.

Clinton is also looking better these days in part because House Speaker Newt Gingrich, so the polls say, is looking worse.

Gingrich isn’t running for president, but far more than Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, who is, Gingrich is the point man for the GOP’s legislative program. His problem since last January is the same as Clinton’s problem for so much of the last three years: overexposure. Which is to say he talks too much.

Clinton seems to be rationing his appearances and comments lately, at least when he’s in Washington. That in itself hardly counts as evidence of statesmanship, and in fact Clinton has been much too slow in presenting a coherent alternative to what Republicans propose doing about the budget, taxes and the deficit. Still, the president is the beneficiary of a growing public concern over parts of the GOP program. That’s more a matter of luck than leadership, but what works in politics works, and Clinton isn’t going to complain.

Meanwhile, the president is making the rounds in Europe, hailing the virtues of sectarian peace in Northern Ireland, boosting the Western alliance, being the concerned and compassionate commander in chief as he bids Godspeed to the troops who are about to move from their bases in Germany to Bosnia.

It’s all very impressive. It may also be quite evanescent, as George Bush--triumphant in the Persian Gulf in 1991, an also-ran candidate in 1992--can woefully attest. Clinton is looking presidential these days, but that’s by no means the same thing as looking hands-down reelectable.