Clinton Hopes for a More Civil Nation in ’99

No one asked him about it, not in so many words.

Nevertheless, even as he greeted the new year with an expression of renewed optimism in the American people and the role of government to help them, President Clinton couldn’t avoid at least an oblique reference to impeachment and the scandal that has enveloped his White House.

Making a plea for a political climate sweeter than that of the year just ending, Clinton told fellow New Year’s Eve celebrators he hoped the nation would “move away from the politics of personal destruction.”

With that, as someone counted down the seconds until 1999, the president plunged into a favored group indoor sport: working the crowd.

But when the stroke of midnight arrived, he and Hillary Rodham Clinton were at each other’s side, sharing a kiss, a champagne toast, and a crowd serenading each other with “Auld Lang Syne,” “God Bless America” and “Oklahoma.”

Clinton spent a little more than an hour on each side of midnight with guests at the annual Renaissance Weekend meeting that has brought him to this barrier island 15 consecutive years.

Indeed, he passed more time putting and puttering than in the earnest debate of policy predicaments that its founders promote as the core of the Renaissance visits to this resort island known for its golfing.

The meetings themselves are private and off the record. An account of the president’s comments and activities was provided by Amy Weiss, a White House spokeswoman. Clinton returned to the White House on Friday night.

The three-day holiday was one of Clinton’s rare breaks from Washington and work since the full onslaught of the impeachment case fell on him in the autumn. His return to Washington may put an end, at least until the spring, to the puffy-eyed, red-nosed, generally exhausted-looking appearance he displayed in December--not that he wouldn’t have reason to look rundown at the end of his most difficult year in office.

He entered the year, said a senior aide, passing “through a phase where he was saying, ‘I have more yesterdays than tomorrows.’ ” But that frequent public recognition of his aging has passed.

Still, the aging continues, sometimes quite visibly.

When Clinton, 52, returned from a weekend trip to the Middle East earlier in the month, “he was dragging--God, he was beat,” said the aide, who sees him nearly every day.

A night or two of seven hours’ sleep repaired some of the damage. But still the bags under his eyes remained pronounced.

The explanation, as ascertained by Press Secretary Joe Lockhart: The first frost that ends the allergy season for many people provides only a temporary respite for the president because he is allergic to evergreen foliage. And during the Christmas holiday, evergreens were ubiquitous at the White House.

By tradition, Clinton in recent years has devoted the last hour of the year to a free-flowing question-and-answer session, calling on his Renaissance questioners himself. This year, the program was scheduled only at the last moment; one of the organizers, Linda LeSourd Lader, collected written questions and chose which ones to ask.

If any guest had submitted a question about impeachment, it was not put to the president.

Rather, he was asked what could be done to help the people of Africa, how he would encourage people to become teachers, and what he learned from trying unsuccessfully to revamp health care in the United States.

Why can’t peace be brought to the Middle East? “Every time something bad happens in the peace process, the extremists do something,” Weiss said in paraphrasing the president, meaning that when progress is made, somebody tries to undo it with terrorism.

Can an African American be placed on the Supreme Court who identifies with African Americans? “Depends who quits when,” Clinton replied, again by Weiss’ paraphrase.

It was a question put to him by a Republican pollster--who helped develop the “contract with America” that Republicans rode to election victories in 1994 that put them in the congressional majority--that turned Clinton’s thinking to the “politics of personal destruction.”

Clinton said the contract worked well for Republicans in 1994 but served the Democrats in 1996, when he won a second term to some extent as a backlash against the Republican performance in the 104th Congress.

Earlier, he spent about an hour and a half with about 125 people ranging in age from 13 to 25, one of whom asked, “What have you learned about life?”

By Weiss’ paraphrased account, Clinton replied that he is “more optimistic than when he took office in 1993 about the capacity of the American people to make changes and the ability of the government to help people improve their lives.”

The two question-and-answer sessions were as close as Clinton came to the typical give and take of the Renaissance event. Instead, the president spent much of Thursday on one golf course, Friday on another, aides said, adding that he also watched his beloved University of Arkansas lose, 45-31, to the University of Michigan in the Florida Citrus Bowl.

But during his quasi-public conversations, seemingly little different from the town meetings and campaign fund-raising events of his presidency, he touted the achievement of a balanced budget, an unemployment rate consistently below 5%, a lowered crime rate and reduced welfare rolls.

And he spoke, as he does at nearly every public turn, of the challenges of the new year: Reworking the Social Security system, managing the global economy and rebuilding the nation’s education program and schools.