Clinton Nears Action on Filling Key Civil Rights Post

President Clinton is fast approaching an-all-but-certain decision to leapfrog “inflexible” Republican senators and install Los Angeles lawyer Bill Lann Lee as the government’s chief civil rights lawyer.

The White House said this is probably the last weekend to convince senators blocking the Lee nomination that a yes-or-no vote is the right way to proceed. But White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said there is no reason to expect that minds will be changed.

White House aides said they had discussed the option of Clinton simply naming Lee to the job at the opening of a scheduled news conference, originally set for Monday.

The news conference was postponed until Tuesday, but McCurry hinted that an announcement on a recess appointment could come earlier. “It wouldn’t be out of the realm of the possible that we might do something on Monday,” he said.

Such a recess appointment would mean Lee could serve until the end of the next session of Congress, giving him about a year in the job.

But McCurry said: “The president hasn’t made any final decision on that because the president would prefer to see him confirmed.”

Clinton himself told representatives of the Asian American community gathered at the White House that he is having “certain difficulties with the options available to me” but that he is “working on it.” He said he believes that Republicans “have made a terrific error here.”

Word circulated on Capitol Hill that Clinton would indeed make the appointment on Monday.

“To go around the Senate I don’t think is a smart thing to do,” said Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb). “As always, when you do something like this . . . there will be consequences. . . . It is not conducive to some overall important agenda items the president wants to work with Congress on.”

For his part, Lee, 48, made it clear that he will accept if Clinton decides to appoint him to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division. He told an interviewer that he would do so out of concern that the nation’s civil rights laws be enforced.

“So if the president asked me to take that job and make sure that the law enforcement job gets done . . . I would really look forward to doing what I could,” Lee said on NBC-TV’s “Today” program.

The veteran NAACP attorney’s nomination remains embedded in the Senate Judiciary Committee. His critics, led by committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), say Lee’s support of affirmative action makes him unfit for the job.

If appointed or confirmed, Lee would become the first Asian American to hold the civil rights post in its 40-year history.

McCurry said if Lee is in fact appointed to the job, any Republican retaliation against the president would be “lamebrained and stupid.”

“I mean, that’s not behavior that the American people would find becoming,” McCurry said.

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The press secretary said a strong effort is being made this week to bring public pressure to bear on the senators who are preventing the Lee nomination from moving to a Senate vote.

He said that was likely the last appeal the administration will make on behalf of the Lee nomination. But he emphasized that Clinton won’t decide on a recess appointment “until he is absolutely certain” there is no other way to put Lee in the job.

He made it clear that Clinton may soon be convinced he has no other choice.

“And maybe that’s the case because the people we are trying to reach are rather inflexible,” he said.

Clinton has made just 38 recess appointments in his first five years in office, compared with 78 over four years by George Bush and 239 by Ronald Reagan over eight years.