Clinton Defends Fund-Raising but Calls for Reforms

President Clinton, offering a broad-based and spirited defense of the campaign fund-raising practices that have enveloped his White House in controversy, Friday said that Vice President Al Gore and the first lady’s chief aide are “highly ethical people” who stayed within the law in their contacts with donors.

The president insisted that White House policy decisions never were made in return for campaign money, an unproven trade-off that has intrigued investigators looking into Democratic fund-raising. And he adamantly defended the propriety of inviting donors to the White House for coffees and overnight stays, which have prompted charges that his administration was “selling” the Lincoln Bedroom.

“The real problem is that these campaigns cost too much money. They take too much time and will continue to do so until we pass campaign finance reform,” the president said during a nationally televised press conference in which he provided the most coherent explanation to date of his views on campaign financing.

In careful, measured tones, the president described the campaign finance system as “out of whack.” But he said that he felt compelled to build as large a Democratic war chest as possible to compete with a heavily financed Republican Party. And in a marked departure from his generally easygoing remarks, the president directed scathing criticism at the Democratic Party, which is returning nearly $3 million in questionable donations, much of it with curious links to foreign sources.

“I was livid,” Clinton said. “I am stunned that in 1996, after all that we’d been through in the last 20 years, that could have happened. It took my breath away.”

In January, the Democratic National Committee announced that it would establish more-effective screening procedures to prevent improper contributions.

The president’s news conference came at the end of a week in which the administration was stung by separate revelations about fund-raising roles played by Gore and Margaret A. Williams, chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Gore acknowledged having made telephone solicitations for funds from his White House office, charging them to a private credit card--actions that seemed to place him in a legal gray area with no court cases as precedent.

Federal law prohibits government employees from soliciting political contributions in government buildings.

Williams took a $50,000 donation from Johnny Chien Chuen Chung--a Taiwanese American living in Torrance, Calif., whose $366,000 in donations and 49 White House visits have made him a key figure in fund-raising investigations--and passed it on to the Democratic Party.

Although Williams may not have “accepted” the donation in the legal sense of having solicited it, the disclosure prompted new charges of improper mixing of political and government activities, an ongoing theme in the series of investigations of Democratic money-raising.

In both cases, the president suggested that the officials had not committed major errors but agreed that such actions should be handled differently in the future.

Gore, he said, did a “good job” of explaining his actions and pointing out that he would not make such calls on government property in the future. The president described Williams as “an honorable person” who had been put in an unusual circumstance by the proffered donation.

“What she probably wishes she said and what I expect future employees to say is: ‘Look, I can take this. It is legal. But we’re not going to do it this way. You have to mail it in or you just have to take it in yourself,’ ” Clinton said.

He did not remember making the sorts of calls that Gore did, the president said, but he stopped short of saying that it never had happened. “I’m not sure, frankly,” he said.

Speaking more broadly about fund-raising, the president defended the ethical standards of the White House. He seemed to have three principal points to make: that raising large sums of money is a perfectly legitimate aspect of the American political system and that he felt compelled to raise vast amounts for his party last year--but that the system, nonetheless, has grown excessively costly.

A lifelong politician, Clinton spoke feelingly about the propriety of fund-raising and the relationship that ultimately may develop between donors and public officials.

“I do not agree with the inherent premise . . . that there’s somehow something intrinsically wrong with a person that wants to give money to a person running for office and that if you accept it that something wrong has happened,” he said.

It is only natural that a politician may develop friendship toward supporters and sympathizers over time, he maintained, while acknowledging the acute skepticism in the media about such relationships.

“You can make your own judgments . . ,” he continued, “but I just simply disagree that it is wrong for a president to ask his friends and supporters to spend time with him.”

In recent months, critics have contended that Democratic practices such as courting donors with invitations to White House events and providing presidential access at the very least have blurred the line between politics and governing and amounted to an unseemly use of the White House as a money-raising tool.

But on Friday, the president argued that the zeal of Democratic fund-raising was dictated by the sharp ideological clash with a better-financed Republican Party.

Clinton said: “We had to work hard, within the law, to raise a lot of money to be competitive. We did work hard, and I’m glad we did because the stakes were high and the divisions between us in Washington at that time were very great. . . .

“We were proud of the fact that within the limits of the law we worked hard to raise money so that we could get our message out there and we would not be buried--literally buried--by the amount of money that the other side had at their disposal,” he said.

A recent study found that the Republican Party raised $141.2 million in unlimited soft money donations in 1995 and 1996, while the Democrats took in $122.3 million. Soft money goes to the political parties and is not supposed to be used to promote specific candidates.

At the same time, the president sought Friday to demonstrate his support for reforming the system. He repeated his wish that Congress would pass a campaign finance reform bill by July 4 and seemed frustrated that such legislation has gotten bogged down.

Until more lawmakers support the bill, “you will be left with the same system next time and the time after that and the time after that,” he said. “And because of the exponential rise in the cost of buying air time and other means of communication, we’ll have all these questions all over again, time and time and time again.”

On other matters, Clinton took issue with his critics. He defended the note he wrote enthusiastically approving the idea of a program to bring many of his supporters to White House events. Critics seized on the note, found among the voluminous records kept by former Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes, as proof that Clinton was in effect selling White House access to donors.

“I appreciated what they had done. I didn’t want them to feel estranged from me. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a president--me or anyone else--reaching out to his supporters,” the president said Friday.

Noting that he had released a list of overnight White House guests, Clinton declared: “I’ve given you all this information and you can make your own judgments.”

Clinton also had fond words for the White House coffee klatches, which he said were a useful way for him to escape the isolation of the Oval Office. At the coffees, Clinton typically mixed with small groups, many of whose members were subsequently asked for donations by the Democratic Party.

“I genuinely enjoyed them,” he said, “and I still believe as long as there was no specific price tag put on those coffees--just the fact that they would later be asked to help the president or the party--does not render them improper. That’s what I believe.”

* DONATION QUESTIONS: $10,000 came from an address with boarded-up windows. A14

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In His Words

After a week of disclosures about White House fund-raising, President Clinton answered questions in a 51-minute news conference dominated by questions on campaign finance.

“What I can say is that the White House should not knowingly permit the White House or the presidency or the vice presidency to be used to advance some private economic interest.”

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“We had to work hard, within the law, to raise a lot of money to be competitive. We did work hard, and I’m glad we did. . . .”

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“I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution.”

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“I think I was more upset maybe than some of you were when I found out that my party was not checking the checks that were coming in. I was livid.”