NEWS ANALYSIS : Specter of Past Disarray Besets White House

The Clinton White House has once again plunged into a crisis of confidence and competence that recalls the worst days of disarray of its rookie year in 1993.

Beset by internal turmoil, virulent political opposition and dangerous legal exposure, this perilous presidency appears yet again in danger of derailment.

Three weeks ago, top White House aides and officials of the Clinton reelection committee had convinced themselves they could survive the dripping Whitewater torture because the events at issue were sufficiently distant in time and difficult to comprehend that the American electorate would largely ignore them.

The economy was humming, congressional Democrats were tame and Clinton was blessed with trouble-plagued opponents in GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Senate Whitewater Committee Chairman Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.).

Then came the stunning revelation that two obscure staffers with political backgrounds, working in the bowels of the White House complex, had--for reasons now under debate--obtained sensitive FBI files on more than 400 former White House employees, including many prominent Republican leaders.

This was trouble of a wholly different sort than Whitewater.

The FBI files fiasco has brought gloom to a White House that appeared to be coasting to easy reelection.

And while polls do not yet reflect damage to the president’s reputation or to his reelection prospects, there is plenty of time between now and November, and plenty of delayed-fuse mines set to go off, for serious or even fatal wounds to be inflicted.

The president is clearly troubled by the situation, and occasionally allows his frustration to seep into his public comments. In Chicago on Friday, Clinton veered from a speech on the administration’s economic record to decry the “cheap partisan politics” that he said is impeding his efforts to govern.

In the same speech, at a convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Clinton said he was “tired of all the people who seek to divide us every day for their own personal advantage.”

Lesser White House officials also are on edge. Normally unflappable Press Secretary Mike McCurry has been uncharacteristically abusive to his staff, aides complain.

Even in his role as official spokesman, McCurry has been abnormally curt. When told that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno would ask Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to investigate the files issue, McCurry said of the administration’s critics: “Hopefully, it will shut them up.”

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The White House’s defensiveness about the FBI files can also be seen in efforts to criticize Republicans for bringing the matter up--as if what the director of the FBI called an “egregious” invasion of privacy was not a fit subject for discussion.

“Well, that’s all they’ve got to do,” Vice President Al Gore said in a TV interview Sunday. “They can’t talk about the issues, and so they’re going to talk about the first lady’s law practice 15 years ago [part of the Whitewater inquiry] and they’re going to talk about everything except the economic boom in America and the declining crime rate and the advancing prospects for American families.”

This week, Clinton will assiduously try to change the subject, speaking today in Nashville at a Gore-sponsored conference on family values. On Tuesday, he is to announce support for a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of crime victims. On Wednesday, he jets off to Lyons, France, for an international economic summit.

But even in Lyons, Clinton can be expected to face questions on ethics matters, in part because there is little concrete news expected from the meeting of the leading industrial democracies and in part because the major hoped-for distraction of the gathering--a rendezvous with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin--was canceled because Yeltsin is staying home to campaign for reelection.

The FBI files affair will continue to percolate, with congressional hearings later in the week and a possible vote on a contempt-of-Congress citation against the White House for refusing to release 2,000 internal documents because of “executive privilege.”

The new controversy only compounds the medley of scandals and embarrassments lumped under the name Whitewater that were already beginning to pose more serious problems for the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Today, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the Paula Corbin Jones sexual-harassment case against the president can go forward or must wait until he leaves office. Clinton has claimed that because of the unique responsibilities of the presidency he should not have to answer charges now that he sexually propositioned an Arkansas state worker when he was governor.

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In another matter, the president is scheduled to testify by videotape on July 7 in a trial now underway in Little Rock, Ark., involving two bankers who helped fund his 1990 gubernatorial campaign and later received appointments to state jobs.

Clinton has no legal exposure in this case, but his close friend and senior White House advisor Bruce Lindsey is expected to be named an unindicted co-conspirator, making him a prime political target.

Losing Lindsey, if it came to that, would be a profound personal blow to the president, who has already seen the humiliation, imprisonment and, in one case, suicide, of Arkansas cronies he brought with him to Washington.

And Starr’s prosecutorial noose continues to tighten, as he builds a white-collar conspiracy case that moves ever closer to the White House. Even the most stalwart Clinton partisans do not believe that Starr will fold his tent after the bankers’ case now being heard in federal court.

But despite the barrage of bad news, a series of national and state surveys last week showed Clinton maintaining a commanding lead over Dole.

A Washington Post/ABC News survey showed Clinton holding a 20-percentage-point advantage over his GOP challenger; a Gallup Organization Inc. survey gave Clinton a 19-percentage-point lead. Private Democratic surveys conducted last week did not show quite as wide a gap, but they gave Clinton a solid lead of 12 to 15 percentage points, party sources said.

These numbers have fallen like artillery on Republicans who were briefly cheered by one recent survey that showed Clinton’s lead narrowing to a 6-point advantage.

The fact that Clinton continues to hold such a substantial lead over Dole despite the recent succession of blows suggests the magnitude of the challenge facing the presumptive Republican nominee as he tries to catch up with the president.

Despite the absence of impact so far, analysts on both sides say they believe that the cascade of ethical allegations against the White House could be seeding greater doubts about Clinton that could come back to haunt him later. “You may be looking at some termite damage,” said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based Democratic pollster.

Indeed, interviews with voters indicate that they may be more troubled by the possibility that White House officials violated basic privacy rights for political purposes than by anything they have heard about Clinton up to now.

“I have a real problem with all of these so-called blunders. It’s just unconscionable that all of these things ‘just happened,’ ” said Paula Moyer of Glendora, a Metropolitan Water District worker attending the AFSCME convention. “I can’t believe they’re just glossing over all of these things.”

But one of her co-workers averred that Clinton was the victim of political enemies trying to divert attention from his accomplishments.

“I look at his performance and all this stuff has no effect for me. It’s just regular Washington politics. It’s part of a game I’ve come not to enjoy so I tend to ignore most of it,” said Paul Smith, of Parker Dam, Calif., another MWD worker.

In one sense, Clinton is benefiting from the low esteem in which the voters hold all politicians. All the alleged misdeeds, all the charges and countercharges, are lumped together as “politics as usual” by some and discounted.

But the FBI files matter could have a delayed effect if new revelations emerge, the White House fears.

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The full political impact of ethical allegations isn’t always immediately apparent. It took several months for the initial round of Whitewater allegations, in the fall of 1993, to take a toll on Clinton’s approval ratings. Then his standing dropped sharply after the Whitewater independent counsel delivered the first subpoenas to top administration aides in March 1994.

Few Democrats believe that Clinton has escaped the risk that voters may yet hold the disparate accusations against him. Both sides, however, agree on one point: Further damaging revelations could eventually tilt voters’ attitudes from indifferent to enraged. And no one knows exactly where the tipping point lies.