Clinton Alone at Times Due to Dual Campaigns

If President Clinton seems a tad forlorn these days, who can blame him?

With both his vice president and his wife in various stages of leaving him, Clinton indeed cuts a lonely figure at times.

“We don’t have lunch every week, and I miss that terribly,” the president said of Al Gore during an hourlong news conference Wednesday.

But Gore’s absences notwithstanding, the vice president has not neglected his “critical functions,” Clinton said, adding that he thinks Gore is right to favor his presidential campaign over his vice presidential duties.

“I think it’s in the best interests of the country for him to do it,” Clinton said.

As for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is spending much time in New York to prepare for a run for the Senate, the president was equally tolerant.

“I’m happy for her, for the decision that she made,” he said. “She’ll be here when she can. I’ll go up there when I can. And we’ll be together as much as we can.”

Clinton acknowledged that their daily telephone conversations, when they are not together, may not be “the best arrangement in the world, but it’s something that we can live with for a year.”

The president said he is “looking forward to” living in the Chappaqua, N.Y., house that he and his wife now own after his term ends in January 2001.

In the meantime, Clinton said, “we’ll have to be apart more than I wish we were. But it’s not a big problem. She’ll be here quite a lot and I’ll go up there when I can, and we’ll manage it and I think it will come out just fine.”