Next Chapter for Clinton Is a Mystery

President Clinton had just visited a museum in upstate New York when a National Park Service ranger jokingly offered him a tour guide’s job there after he leaves the presidency.

“I can work cheap. I’ve got a good pension,” Clinton responded.

His public comments are flip. His thinking may be sketchy. He resists friends’ entreaties to focus on retirement. But the outlines of Clinton’s post-presidential life are beginning to take shape, 16 months before he leaves office.

He has hired Robert B. Barnett, one of the best-known lawyer-agents in Washington, presumably to obtain the most lucrative book contract available from New York publishers.

Barnett said that he has received a variety of proposals but doubts that he will talk to Clinton about them until next summer.

In the meantime, the possibilities for deal-making seem endless: One or more books. Paid speeches, which for an ex-president in the immediate aftermath of his tenure can bring $50,000 or more. Affiliation with a mass media outlet as a commentator. Teaching.

Much depends on what one advisor called “the philosophy of his post-presidency.” Will Clinton opt to remain in public life, playing a political role even if he follows the customary course of former presidents and avoids public commentary on his successor’s work? Will he choose a commercial direction, much as Gerald R. Ford did by working closely with corporate America?

For the moment, even as his friends say that he has unlimited options, it is easier to rule some out than to outline a specific course.

“The suggestion he’d join DreamWorks--that’s not his cup of tea,” said former Sen. Dale Bumpers, a longtime Arkansas acquaintance, reflecting on a rumor that Clinton’s Hollywood friends had studio work in mind for him. “It would involve sitting at a desk.

“He’s a policy wonk. He may be a little more outspoken than other presidents have been. I’d be surprised if Bill Clinton can stay out of the limelight.”

His friends and closest aides expect him to spend much of his first year or so out of office working on the Clinton Center, the presidential library and museum to be built in Little Rock, Ark.

Friends believe that his library will serve as a fulcrum for policy studies in the same way that the Carter Presidential Center has become a force for diplomacy.

“He’s interested in continuing programs related to race relations, education and world peace,” said Skip Rutherford, president of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Foundation, which is responsible for building the Clinton library. Spreading economic recovery to the nation’s poor and environmentally sound economic growth are also on his agenda, others have said.

The complex--to include a presidential library, museum and research center--will cost $80 million to $125 million, and fund-raising will fall mostly to Clinton. He has suggested that he might, at first, spend extended weekends at the family home that he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton are buying in Chappaqua, N.Y., and midweek working on the library in Little Rock.

But in typical Clinton fashion, he has put off any but the most tentative discussion of how he will spend his post-White House years.

“It sounds like fluff but it is true: He is remarkably concerned about what he is doing now. Of course he’s concerned about what he does down the road, but I don’t think he’s thinking about it,” said one longtime friend who wants the president to begin planning his future.

Among Clinton associates, there is a desire to protect the president’s privacy. There is uncertainty about whether Mrs. Clinton’s political career in New York will take her to the U.S. Senate and what that would mean for her husband.

But, the president’s friends and political advisors said, speculation about what the president will do after he leaves office also serves only to detract from a still-crowded domestic policy agenda and to undercut his remaining authority by reminding the public that his term is drawing to a close.

Clinton, barred by the Constitution from seeking a third term, has few role models for a man in his early 50s who has already been president. Not since Theodore Roosevelt left the White House in March 1909 when he was 50 has a president become a former president at such a young age. Clinton, at 54, will be younger when his presidency ends at noon on Jan. 20, 2001, than many candidates when they first seek the office.

Recent presidents provide examples of options available to Clinton but none, his friends say, is a perfect fit. Richard Nixon, largely out of the public eye, wrote books and set about trying to rehabilitate his image. Ford is on corporate boards and plays golf. Carter established the Carter Center in Atlanta. He wrote a book of poetry and his memoirs and other books on his observations of the human condition. He helps build houses for the poor and monitors human rights and elections in fledgling democracies. Ronald Reagan gave speeches. George Bush travels and gives speeches.

Only Carter, 56 when he left the White House in 1981, was near in age to Clinton. The two, who are not personally close, have spoken about presidential libraries.

None of the other former executives pretended to be embarking on anything other than retirement to one degree or another.

“I think he’s going to be showered with opportunities, and there are very little restrictions on him, other than what respect for the institution [of the presidency], decorous behavior and good taste dictate,” said Michael Cardozo, a Washington lawyer who directed Clinton’s first legal defense fund.

Far more than his most recent predecessors, Clinton must consider financial needs.

He is leaving office with perhaps fewer assets than any recent president other than Harry S. Truman, the haberdasher-turned-politician. His debt to the lawyers who defended him during the Whitewater and impeachment investigations is in the vicinity of $5 million.

To win a book contract for that much money is possible. Reagan, the most recent two-term president, was reported to have signed a $5-million contract for two volumes, although its sales disappointed publishers. Other predecessors have fared less well. Bush’s writings brought something more than $1 million. Ford and his wife, Betty, jointly sold the rights to their memoirs for $1 million, according to reports at the time.

Friends said that Clinton could move into the private sector--for example, helping an international banking house line up business overseas. A seat on a corporate board could be worth $50,000 to $100,000 in fees and stock, for five or six meetings a year.

“If I were a CEO and wanted someone bright and experienced and well-connected and energetic, could you think of anyone better?” said Mickey Kantor, who has known Clinton for more than two decades and served as his first U.S. trade representative.

But such a route could be risky, said Kenneth M. Duberstein, Reagan’s last chief of staff. He would be lending the prestige of his office to a private venture, and corporate embarrassments could follow.

“You’ve got to be careful because anything you touch could have a negative context,” Duberstein said. “If he went on the Exxon board and they had another Exxon Valdez [oil spill], or he went to Coke and they had a problem with health authorities--that’s the sort of problem you can be dealing with.”

The president is a member of the Arkansas bar. But work as a lawyer is far from certain. Legal authorities there said that he could face disbarment or suspension from practicing law because a federal judge found him in contempt of court this year for untruthful statements in the Paula Corbin Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. A suspension would carry no criminal penalty, but it could lower his earning potential because major law firms might be less likely to make him a big-name partner.

There is also speculation that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr or his successor could yet indict Clinton. Associates say Starr is leaning toward an indictment.

John F. Kennedy mused that in retirement, he would like to buy a newspaper company or perhaps become the ambassador to Ireland. Clinton has made it clear that he will play golf.

Whatever happens with Clinton, the former law professor, state attorney general and governor is facing the reality that he is nearing the end of the political life he sketched for himself as a teenager.

“I’ve been friends with Bill Clinton since 1974. There’s never been a dull moment. I don’t expect it to be dull in 2001,” said Rutherford of the Clinton foundation. “I don’t know what kind of ride it will be, but it’ll be a good one.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, he added: “I sure hope he makes some money.”

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story.