<p>By shedding bad habits and letting Congress have its say, Clinton
ends his losing streak
</p>
<p>By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON--With reporting by Nancy Traver and Adam Zagorin/Washington
</p>
<p> Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers plunked herself down in David
Gergen's basement office in the West Wing last Monday night
and laid out her problem. Just hours before, Clinton had named
Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, but then abruptly
ended a press conference when Brit Hume of ABC News nettled
the President with a question about his tortured selection process.
Myers told Gergen that she expected the morning to bring good
economic news, and was looking for a way to capitalize on that
story and make the Rose Garden incident history. Gergen, who
served as communications director for Ronald Reagan, said, "Let's
just walk him into the briefing room tomorrow morning."
</p>
<p> Clinton was cool to Gergen's idea at first but relented after
some prodding. He appeared before reporters the next day at
noon, and made a cathartic joke at his own expense. "You know
what I'm upset about?" he asked the newly married Hume. "You
got a honeymoon, and I didn't." As reporters chuckled, Gergen
whispered to Myers, "That was perfect." Clinton left the briefing
room feeling triumphant. "That was fun," he said to Myers. "We
ought to do more of it, you know?"
</p>
<p> By the end of his first good week in months, Bill Clinton had
begun to shed, often grudgingly, some of the peculiar habits
that helped send his approval ratings to a record low for a
first-term President. He is delegating responsibility to a new
troika of top aides. He is more disciplined with his words in
public. He is spending less time in meetings with advisers and
more time mending fences with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. While
no one believes the White House is working perfectly yet--the President remains hopelessly behind his daily schedule--Clinton's confidence is returning. "The President," said White
House chief of staff Mack McLarty, "is in a more natural gait."
</p>
<p> Clinton's progress coincided with several successes on Capitol
Hill last week that suggest that this White House may not spend
all four years in intensive care. Most were months in the making,
and none were unalloyed Clinton wins. But their combined effect
broke the gloom that had pervaded the White House and fractured
some of the gridlock in Washington. After weeks of intraparty
wrangling, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee agreed
to a deficit-reduction measure that included a gasoline tax
increase of 4.3 cents per gal. and a $68 billion cut in Medicare
benefits over five years. While a vote in the full Senate and
an ugly conference to reconcile differences with the House
version still loom, the latest deal takes Clinton closer to
making good on his promise to cut the deficit by $500 billion
during the next five years.
</p>
<p> The breakthrough came a week after Clinton pulled out of the
Finance Committee's negotiations in order to let chairman Daniel
Patrick Moynihan and majority leader George Mitchell forge the
compromise. McLarty said Clinton will stay "a little above"
the parliamentary fray at least until the measure clears the
Senate and goes to conference committee. "The point," said
an adviser, "is to get something on the table so that when the
economy gets better, you can take credit for it."
</p>
<p> In another move that helped reposition Clinton as a moderate,
the Senate adopted a campaign-finance reform bill on Wednesday
that imposes voluntary spending limits. The same day two separate
committees approved scaled-back versions of Clinton's national-service
program, which would give about 25,000 volunteers a $7,000 stipend
and $5,000 to pay off college loans for each year of social,
law-enforcement or environmental work. Even the White House
was surprised when 107 House Republicans were among the majority
last week that approved a $2.5 billion Russian-aid package,
something that Clinton has vigorously pushed. The President's
aides arrived at their desks Thursday morning to find what one
called "the first good front page of the year."
</p>
<p> Meanwhile the White House reorganization that Clinton launched
three weeks ago is beginning to pay off. Clinton is now relying
on a team of three aides--Gergen, McLarty and senior adviser
George Stephanopoulos--to make many decisions, coordinate
policy and foil errors before they turn into embarrassing debacles.
The trio has taken control of many matters that Clinton once
insisted on administering himself, and is working surprisingly
well together. "We have more hands on deck," Stephanopoulos
said on Friday. "We can ask more questions. We can look over
the horizon. We are beginning to work on problems before they
get to the President" or, he admitted, the front page. Added
Gergen: "The three of us are bonding very well. We finish each
other's sentences."
</p>
<p> Though McLarty is still the staff ceo, Gergen has become the
chief operating officer. Many Clinton aides who were skeptical
on his arrival just weeks ago now praise Gergen's judgment,
his sense of timing, and are openly grateful for what one called
his "seasoning and experience." When Myers too candidly described
a meeting between Clinton and Alan Greenspan two weeks ago,
prompting doubt about the Federal Reserve chairman's independence,
aides were astonished at how quickly the episode was smoothed
over. Greenspan simply telephoned Gergen, his old Nixon-era
colleague, to work out "clarifying" language. During an hour-long
prep session for Clinton's prime-time press conference Thursday,
it was Gergen who cleared the Oval Office of innumerable junior
aides so Clinton could concentrate for the final 15 minutes.
"Gergen," said an official, "is in control. He is in control."
</p>
<p> Not all is sweetness and light, however. Aides grumble that
Gergen overplayed his role when he followed Clinton into the
briefing room last week and stood nearby looking just a bit
too much as if he were watching a presidential marionette. Many
of the communications operatives who were once all powerful
under Stephanopoulos resent any credit Gergen gets. "Anything
that goes right will be ascribed to Gergen," said one, "and
anything that goes wrong will get blamed on us." But such carping
is widely dismissed. "George's acolytes now have to work through
channels," said an aide of the Stephanopoulos crew, "and that's
good for the President."
</p>
<p> Gergen hedges his certitude: "So far it's been good," he told
TIME. "We feel better. But we got a lot of work to do, and nobody's
saying `We're out of the woods.' "
</p>
<p> Gergen's toughest job will be to help Clinton cast as victories
what are the necessary losses of political compromise. The Finance
Committee's action last week put to rest any chance that Clinton
would realize his goal of heavily taxing energy consumption
to pay for new investments in education, plant and equipment.
As Clinton imagined it, the new spending was supposed to stimulate
the economy. "What's happened instead," said a senior official,
"is that the stimulative effect will come almost entirely from
lower interest rates that stem from deficit reduction, rather
than from any impact of the budget items themselves."
</p>
<p> Clinton's task remains enormous. He must stay focused on the
deficit, end his micromanaging, and come up with something to
say about the budget besides how badly he "wants to keep the
process moving." His closest advisers admit privately that,
even with the new troika in place, the White House still needs
a bad cop to impose more discipline on independent-minded party
regulars and also on the President. But Clinton is learning.
And school is one area in which he knows how to excel.
