At Year’s End, Clinton ‘Betwixt and Between’

For an hour at sunset here, the president strolled on the beach with his dog and a friend, pitching a soggy tennis ball again and again into the waves or onto a ridge of sand and watching the dog bound after it.

“Where’s your ball? Where’d you lose it?” Bill Clinton called out to the occasionally befuddled Buddy. The beep-beep-beep of Secret Service agents’ hand-held metal detectors, employed to scan beach-walking tourists, offered an odd counterpoint to the rhythm of the waves.

The quiet, almost wistful moment was a rare break in the soap opera that has made Clinton’s sixth year in office one of the most bizarre any president has ever experienced.

“Betwixt and between” is the way Clinton’s former chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, describes the state in which the president now finds himself.

His annual visit to this barrier island resort catches the impeached Clinton waiting for the start of his trial in the Senate, likely to begin within two weeks. While his lawyers in Washington frantically prepare his legal defense against two impeachment counts, Clinton, at least outwardly, seems calmly resigned to his situation, almost at peace with it.

His state of mind is a subject of some speculation among his allies and adversaries, all of whom believe his demeanor could be important in ending the year of scandal.

As the president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, left Washington on Wednesday for their three-day visit here, some Republicans continued to seethe about what they see as a what-me-worry mien he has projected toward impeachment itself, since he seems to have enough Senate votes to preclude conviction.

An ‘Incredibly Untimely’ Rally

On the day he was impeached, Clinton’s defenders rallied in the White House garden. A throng of Democratic members of the House of Representatives stood by Clinton and applauded him.

The next day, attending a holiday party, he was asked by a Times reporter how he felt after his impeachment. “Not bad,” he said.

His attitude stirred grumbling among some advisors that working out a deal with Republicans on a compromise punishment of censure would only be tougher amid such displays.

Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), a moderate who has voted with Democrats on many high-profile issues, characterized the defiant rally as “unseemly and incredibly untimely.”

It would not affect her vote during the Senate trial, she said in a telephone interview from Portland, Maine, but “it . . . called into question some of the Democrats’ sincerity in proposing a censure resolution--going down to the White House, telling him he’s one of the best presidents in history.”

Some moderate Republicans, along with Democrats, say they want to see tangible evidence that Clinton is genuinely sorry for the ordeal he has caused.

Clinton is remorseful, his allies say. However, he has other emotions. A politician who has worked closely with him throughout his presidency said the lawyer in Clinton also sees the strengths and weaknesses in the impeachment case and wants to fight aggressively for his position.

But projecting defiance or confidence can cause complications.

Recalling the embarrassing victory scene captured earlier this year by a television camera after Clinton got word of the dismissal of the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, a veteran of White House crisis control in previous administrations said that if Clinton escapes the Senate with his presidency, “he can’t be playing bongo drums and lighting up a cigar.”

Clintons Attend 15th Renaissance Weekend

Clinton was drawn to Hilton Head this New Year’s holiday, as he has been the previous 14, by the annual conference known as Renaissance Weekend.

It is a gathering of genuine policy wonks and wannabes. Families in tow, they spend a few days in earnest debate, industrial-strength schmoozing and common networking built around panel discussions on such topics as, “How the Geeks Have Inherited the Earth,” “What’s Next for the Dems & GOP?” and, led by five Nobel laureates, a seminar on “Scientific Research Which Will Change Our Lives.”

What began as a retreat of perhaps 50 families is now, in its 18th year, drawing 1,350 participants, its name a registered trademark and its five days of meetings off the record, unrecorded and most adamantly closed--by armed guards--to all but the invited.

“Renaissance Weekends are nonpartisan and multidimensional in character, and participants welcome this chance to get to know other accomplished and interesting people in such a civilized, relaxed setting,” the Weekends’ media fact sheet declares.

The president and first lady get an advance list of the panels and programs--365 were planned this year--”and always study it very carefully” before deciding which to attend, said Linda Lesourd Lader. She and her husband, Philip Lader, now Clinton’s ambassador to Britain, began the programs in 1981.

Last year’s seminars, held only weeks before the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal broke, included such prescient topics as “Morals, Manners and Shame in Today’s Pop Culture” and “What My Spouse Is Wrong About (3 Minutes Maximum for Your Own Good!).”

This year, there are a number of touchy subjects, including “Character--What Is It? Does It Count? Has Its Meaning Changed? How Do We Teach It?” and “My Family’s Lessons for Life.”

There was word Thursday that the president would attend at least one session, spending about an hour in a Q&A; with 125 13- to 25-year-olds at the meeting.

President’s Agenda Full Before Speech

Twelve years ago, as they struggled to lift President Reagan out of the depths of the Iran-Contra scandal, the White House staff deployed a plan to portray him as “fully engaged, with an agenda he intended to drive the next two years to avoid a presidency in paralysis,” said Tom Griscom, Reagan’s director of communications at the time.

As he returns to Washington today, Clinton faces a similarly busy agenda of visible business.

In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union address Jan. 19, Clinton is expected to present on a nearly daily basis elements of his domestic policy plan for the coming year.

He will travel to Detroit and to Wall Street to speak on the economy and, at the end of the month, to St. Louis, where he will greet Pope John Paul II.

*

Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Washington contributed to this story.