WASHINGTON INSIGHT

SECURITY FIRST: Administration officials pondering President Clinton’s next step after the budget agreement are leaning against quick action to reform Medicare, the government’s giant health care program for the elderly and disabled. Instead, sentiment in the White House is shifting toward launching an initiative to reform Social Security as the first step toward restructuring Washington’s entitlement programs for the retirement of the baby boom generation. The reason: Senior administration officials say that while relatively minor fixes are required to ensure the stability of Social Security, policymakers remain largely baffled over how to control the expected rapid growth in Medicare costs over the next quarter-century. “Clinton definitely wants to do both in this term,” says one senior White House official. “But there is a general sense that the options are better defined on Social Security.” Medicare is likely to be shunted off into a study commission that both houses of Congress already have voted to establish.

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SEE NO EVIL: White House officials summoned reporters from major news organizations to their offices last week to declare that the Republican-led Senate hearings into campaign finance abuses will be decidedly “partisan” and unfairly critical of the Clinton administration and Democratic fund-raising practices. Asked if the president will follow the hearings, which began Tuesday, a White House aide said Clinton will focus on the business of governing the nation. “I can guarantee you there will not be any photo ops of him watching the hearings,” the aide said.

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OLLIE-FEST: Tuesday also was “exactly 10 years after the date Col. North first riveted the nation with his appearance before a joint congressional committee.” So said the press release announcing that conservative leaders were gathering Tuesday night “to celebrate victory in the Cold War with a special salute to Oliver L. North and Nicaragua’s freedom.” It helps that the sponsor of the Ollie love-fest, the right-wing Freedom Alliance, was founded by North and is a booster of his political aspirations.

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IT’S A BABY VOTER: In an age when pols complain about too much invasion of privacy, it was a surprise Tuesday to see a press release from the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) announcing the adoption of a baby girl. This may also signal Landrieu’s confidence that she will be around for a while and that the Senate probe of fraud involving her election last year will soon end, perhaps today. This is the second adoption by Landrieu and her husband, Frank Snelling; they have a 5-year-old son. The baby’s introduction to politics will come on Thursday, when Landrieu and family host an open house at her Senate office.

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TROUBLE IN PARADISE II: The murder trial of Jim and Penny Fletcher, the West Virginia couple who have been held on murder charges on the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent since October, begins today--with yet another hitch. A member of their defense team, Ralph Gonzalez, is also in jail and has a trial date today. He was charged with contempt of court for commenting that moving the Fletchers’ case to trial after a preliminary hearing showed no probable cause was a “travesty of justice.” Coincidence? The Fletchers and their lawyers think not. The couple was vacationing on the island when their taxi driver was found dead, killed by a gun of the same caliber the Fletchers owned. U.S. State Department officials have accused St. Vincent officials of basing the charges on only a “scintilla of evidence,” and Clinton pleaded their case to St. Vincent’s prime minister on his recent trip to the Caribbean.