A President Under Attack Is Also a President Hard at Work

President Clinton has chosen a strategy for salvaging his presidency even if he is impeached: throw himself into his job.

The military strike in Iraq--which the White House has justified on policy grounds--nevertheless is the first example of the administration’s impeachment-be-damned strategy.

“If they’re still going to vote for impeachment and force the Senate to conduct a trial, then so be it,” said Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste. “He’s still president and he still has to do what the American people elected him to do, which is his job.”

The same modus operandi helped the president weather almost a whole year of scandal over his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky without losing ground in his job approval ratings. It is the same strategy he employed when he dealt with stories during the 1992 presidential campaign about affairs with other women, his avoidance of the draft during the Vietnam War and whether he smoked marijuana as a young man.

But the pressure on the president to keep looking like an engaged, capable president has never been as great as it will be if Congress votes to impeach him.

As a voracious reader of history, clearly Clinton is aware of some traps he must avoid.

Clinton seems determined not to restrict his activities to the foreign arena, as other presidents have done during times of trouble. As the House finishes its deliberations and then votes on his impeachment, the president is busy in meetings with his budget team making final decisions on what new initiatives to press next year.

Friends Concerned About Process

Some friends of the president worry that the process may now be out of his hands and that, even if he does continue acting the part of president with gusto, he might not be able to stop the process from gaining momentum and eventually pushing him out of office.

“Business as usual is a great strategy when Republicans are the troublemakers, but when business as usual starts to look like a diversion, doing the business of government--which he excels at--might not help him,” said Benjamin R. Barber, director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy at Rutgers University and sometimes informal advisor to the president. “I think it’s a very dangerous time for the president.”

“It may be that this is the first time in the presidency when the outcome is not likely to be affected by what the president does,” Barber added. “He might really be in the hands of fate, which is very difficult for a man who has always believed in his capacity to make a difference through his actions.”

That may be true, but the president is not acting that way.

After getting little sleep the night before because of his flight back from the Middle East and the decision-making process on attacking Iraq, Clinton made a rare visit to the daily White House senior staff meeting to send one strong message to his team: stay the course.

According to people there, he instructed staff members to keep their minds off impeachment and on the work of crafting the president’s budget and agenda for next year, which he will outline in his State of the Union address Jan. 19.

Early Thursday evening, the president attended the first of four budget meetings scheduled over the course of four business days.

Although he looked tired, for 1 1/2 hours the president went line-by-line through the budget with his staff and was deeply involved in discussion of the policies he will propose on Jan. 19.

He joked with advisors and participated in back and forth debates, participants said.

“We’ve seen this time and time again,” said Gene Sperling, head of the White House national economic council. “He comes into a budget or policing of Social Security meeting in stressful times and not only focuses but is engaged and quizzing us for details.”

Far from being paralyzed as the Congress debates an early end to this presidency, the White House is busy.

“This is always a hectic week for the budget team. This is the week that we’re scrambling to make the numbers work, handling appeals from Cabinet members, trying to decide which state of the union initiatives make the budget and which hit the cutting room floor,” said Sperling.

This year the pressure is greater because the president has said that he must do the best possible work to help make up for his transgressions and win back the trust of the American people.

For the second year in a row, the president will have a particularly high bar to clear when he gives his State of the Union address.

This year’s speech fell just days after the country learned the name Monica S. Lewinsky. Next year’s could come between the House vote to impeach the president and the Senate trial on the matter.

“That will be one big speech, just as [last January] was one big speech,” said Andrew Kohut, an analyst for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Last January, the speech seemed to help him, at least with the public. Kohut and other pollsters were shocked to see the president’s approval ratings improve after the Lewinsky matter became public. When they asked people why they felt better about the president, some of them mentioned their admiration for how “he can keep on going” under fire, Kohut said.

“He just stood up and gave his speech. That’s one of his real skills,” Kohut said. “He has no nerve endings.”

Kohut said that, if he were in the business of giving the president advice, he would tell him to keep doing what he has been doing--engaging in foreign policy, military action and domestic initiatives. If he does, even impeachment will be downgraded in importance with the American people.

It worked for Reagan. After an initial hit in the public opinion polls when the Iran-Contra scandal broke in 1987, Reagan changed his public posture. With the prodding of new advisors, he became more visibly active as president, and his approval ratings returned.

“The same public psychology is at play here,” Kohut said. “If the president is seen as crippled by a controversy, it’s not good for him. On the other hand, if he’s seen as able to carry on, this goes into a category of a political problem he has to deal with.”

This could be true of impeachment, too.

Appearances Also Deemed Important

Clinton also has to be on guard against even the appearance of losing his grip.

For instance, no matter how much he needs advice, he must not let anyone catch him speaking with the portraits of past presidents in the White House--as President Nixon was spotted doing in his last days before he resigned, Kohut said.

So far, the worst thing that has happened to this president, Kohut said, was the prominent use of a photograph of him sitting in a car looking weary after returning from the Middle East.

“The worst thing that can happen to him is to have the public think he’s mooning in the White House with deep need of anti-depressants,” Kohut said.

And so, the photo opportunities of the president Thursday being briefed by his military advisors in the Oval Office and celebrating Christmas at a star-studded White House event for the Special Olympics.