After Earlier Missteps, Sure-Footed Clinton Tries New Approach

Early in President Clinton’s first term, the Whitewater scandal plainly got under his skin. He anguished over it repeatedly in meetings with aides. He departed from the scripts of public appearances to deliver emotional defenses of the first family’s behavior.

But in recent weeks, as sex and cover-up allegations have clouded his presidency, Clinton has displayed considerably more restraint. In White House policy meetings, aides say, he stays focused on the subject at hand. Before the cameras, his comments about the Monica S. Lewinsky matter are concise and confident.

Many of Clinton’s closest advisors say the contrast reflects a gradual, but nonetheless striking, evolution in his ability to manage his presidency.

In his official business, the energetic, unruly, impulsive Clinton of five years ago has morphed into a more disciplined, controlled, measured chief executive, associates say. He makes decisions more efficiently, delegates much of the planning and analysis to his staff, takes time off for rest and contemplation and is less distracted by controversies swirling around him.

White House insiders say that while governing for five years amid personal and political attacks, the president has honed the ability to “compartmentalize” his time, his thoughts, even his emotions. Clinton has become increasingly adept at stuffing troubling issues into what he calls a “box,” allowing him to concentrate on his other work.

“A couple of years ago, he would get more angry about that stuff,” said John Podesta, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. “Now, I think he just understands that’s their [his opponents’] political game, and he’s going to stay focused on what he wants to do while he’s here. So he just pushes that off to the side by ignoring it.”

Of course, the president’s aides are skilled at portraying their boss in a favorable light. But the characterizations of Clinton’s management acumen seem consistent with his public actions, and several outside analysts say they too sense a metamorphosis in his executive skills.

Clinton observers say the president’s objectives now are clearer and more realistic, his relations with Congress more harmonious and productive, the image he projects more presidential.

They offer numerous examples:

* In early 1995, Clinton spent months deciding whether to embrace the objective of balancing the budget for the first time in decades. Last month, it took him no more than five minutes to decide to advance the timetable by three years. His aides did not even bother to sit down during the Oval Office session in which Clinton reviewed the options and made the call.

* Two years ago, amid a fiscal battle that temporarily shut down the federal government, Clinton sat with Republican congressional leaders for days on end, haggling over the fine print of program funding. Last year, he sent senior staffers to do the negotiating for him and was golfing with Michael Jordan in Las Vegas when a deal was clinched.

Some observers think the Lewinsky crisis may have provided Clinton with an unexpected opportunity to demonstrate his ability to stay focused on official business at a time when his job performance is a matter of intense public interest. If true, that could help explain the president’s remarkably high approval ratings in recent polls.

“He’s more focused,” said Podesta, who has worked in the White House on and off since the beginning of Clinton’s presidency. “He cares about the big things and moving the big things along. He’s more easy about leaving some of the minutiae . . . to others, which I think is a growth process.”

Yet some people miss the old Clinton. Asked to characterize the change he has observed in his close friend of 25 years, ex-Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich described the early first-term Clinton as “idealistic and frenetic.” The current chief executive, he said, is “cautious and calm.”

To Reich, whose view is shared by some other Clinton loyalists and political analysts, the Clinton of five years ago was more likely to pursue grand objectives. Although they find little to fault with the president’s new priorities, they regret that the scale of his ambition has shrunk.

“I’m inclined to think I liked the guy who tried to do things but made mistakes better than I like the guy who doesn’t do too much,” said Bill Frenzel, a political analyst at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “A guy whose mouth used to be too big for his stomach [now] seems to me to be cautious, trying to manage the situation and not willing to engage.”

Instead of trying to force a wholesale reform of the nation’s health care system to provide universal coverage, Clinton now is pushing smaller, more manageable initiatives. This year, he is prodding states to sign up more low-income children under Medicaid.

Instead of linking most-favored-nation trade status for China to improved human rights, as he did to no avail in 1993, Clinton now stresses that closer trade ties and diplomacy will lead to incremental improvements. To some outside analysts, the contrast suggests Clinton has hit his stride as president. He understands the forces at work in the nation and the world well enough to judge when presidential action will produce results, and when it will be fruitless, they say. By identifying more pragmatic goals that are less likely to be shot down by a hostile lawmaker or foreign leader, he can achieve more.

White House insiders say the president also has altered markedly the way he utilizes his staff and works with Congress.

In the early years, Clinton was famous for formulating policy by conducting a series of hours-long, graduate school-style gabfests. Now, much of the policy development takes place through detailed memos that flow in and out of the Oval Office.

“He can read three memos and comment on them in the time that he could have one meeting,” said one senior staff member.

During Clinton’s first two years, when he was confronted with a haughty, Democrat-controlled Congress, and his second, when antagonistic Republicans were calling the shots, the president spent a great deal of time and energy wrestling with the folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, aides say, Clinton recognizes that the best way to deal with Congress in most cases is to let his staff do the job for him.

By removing himself from the fray, Clinton has lowered the stakes but increased his winnings, some advisors contend.

As part of last year’s budget agreement, which was negotiated by his staff, several of Clinton’s key priorities were enacted with relatively little struggle.

Associates say the president’s hands-off approach was learned the hard way.

“He’d gotten burned by micromanagement in the past,” said Gene Sperling, who heads Clinton’s National Economic Council. “Every little up and down in the negotiations became a test of his presidency.”

In 1993, for example, Clinton became personally involved in a battle to boost the grazing fees paid by Western ranchers who lease federal land--and lost. The defeat left him politically weakened, even though the initiative had not been among his top priorities.

One of the reasons cited for Clinton’s new sure-footedness is the record of accomplishment of his first term.

“We’ve done this for quite a while now, and we’re able to see the fruits of our past successes,” said a senior White House official, citing as examples the decline in welfare rolls, the robust economy, and peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Clinton associates say the president now makes full use of his ability to compartmentalize his thoughts, enabling him to engage in detailed discussions on topics in quick succession without relying on written or verbal summaries of previous deliberations.

And it has helped Clinton cope with the series of controversies that has clouded his presidency, from Whitewater to Paula Corbin Jones to campaign finance to Lewinsky.

At a recent White House reception, the president offered a reporter his own explanation of how he shuts out the clamor of a personal crisis.

The first priority is simply “showing up” for work every day, no matter what else is happening around him.

The second, he said, pushing his hands over his head as if to demonstrate, involves “lifting up” the cloud of allegations so he can concentrate on the work he was elected to do.