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                                                                                THE TRANSITION, Page 35

CLINTON'S PEOPLE

Altar Boy at the Power Center


Self-effacing GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS is one of the savviest
communicators in the business

By MARGARET CARLSON/WASHINGTON - With reporting by Priscilla
Painton/New York


    As he walka in a soft drizzle to his car next to the
campaign headquarters in Little Rock, George Stephanopoulos
hardly seems like a major player in any drama -- much less a
presidential succession. Described by his colleague and close
friend Paul Begala as a guy "well over four feet tall slumming
in a jeans jacket with an MTV haircut," he has, at 31, leaped
ahead of his elders to be at the red-hot center of the Clinton
universe. While everyone knows who he is -- his face is now
beamed round the world as transition communications director --
it is hard to figure out how someone so self-effacing ended up
where he is.

    In 1988 he worked on Michael Dukakis' campaign as head of
the "rapid response" team, a wildly misnomered unit that
reacted to Bush's assaults by dreaming up counterattacks that
the candidate then rarely delivered. His main job, Steph
anopoulos jokes, was to serve as a sounding board for one-liners
to see if they would get a laugh. "I was just another short,
over-smart Greek without a sense of humor."

    Still, he made enough of a reputation for himself that in
1991 he was wooed by both the Bob Kerrey and Clinton campaigns.
Stephanopoulos recalls the instant rapport that he felt during
his first meeting with Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg. "Midway
through the interview," says Steph anopoulos, "I started working
for him."

    This time around, his fantasies became the campaign. After
traveling at Clinton's side through the primaries,
Stephanopoulos settled last May into a messy office with two
banks of phones. He became Clinton incarnate, so imbued with the
candidate's philosophy and policy that when he spoke it was as
if Clinton were there. "He made everything happen," says media
consultant Mandy Grunwald. To mainline the candidate's
unfiltered personality to the voters, Stephanopoulos
orchestrated appearances on talk shows and MTV. He pulled
together Clinton's compendium of economic solutions, Putting
People First, a task that required him to ride herd on a
disparate group of economic advisers, all of whom thought they
possessed the cure for the deficit and the qualities to be
Treasury Secretary.

    Begala recalls screaming at Stephanopoulos not to allow
network star Ted Koppel onto the plane to do a special on the
campaign's last 48 hours, since it wouldn't air until after the
election. "But George's argument was that when you see Clinton
unhandled and unproduced, people like him. And he was thinking
down the road. That's my definition of vision: anybody who can
think beyond Election Day."

    With an intellect unencumbered by a comparable ego,
Stephanopoulos was able to bridge the chasm separating the
campaign's often mismatched personalities. He made sure that
Hollywood's laid-back producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who
made the convention bio-film, was on speaking terms with
chain-smoking, laser-intense Grunwald; he doled out face time
on television among aspiring talking heads; not least, he
soothed the brilliant, tightly coiled gonzo strategist James
Carville by watching infomercials and Julia Child with him when
Carville was too nervous to work.

    In return for the companionship, Carville agreed to put
his thoughts into full sentences on paper, and thus turned out
the basic working document for the general campaign in June.
"We never had a cross word despite my spending most of my
waking hours with him in the most intense endeavor on the
planet. With other people, I have cross words about every five
minutes," says Carville crossly. "Let's put it this way: I wish
I had a daughter because I would want her to marry George."

    Stephanopoulos developed his selflessness as the grandson
and son of Greek Orthodox priests, expected to be above
reproach -- a child impersonating a grown-up. "A lot of priest's
kids go bad, go wild, can't stand the strain of the scrutiny of
the flock looking at them," says Begala. "George clearly was up
to it." His too-good-to-be-true face looks out from a gallery of
photos lining the wall of his parents' apartment on New York
City's East 74th Street, next to the Holy Trinity Greek
Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral, where his father serves as
dean. There is little George in his white-and-gold altar-boy
robes next to Archbishop Iakovos. There he is, poised and
smiling, accepting the Truman scholarship from Margaret Truman,
and robed again as the salutatorian at Columbia University.

    Now the perfect child who once wanted to be a priest is
grown up and, despite the Italian cut of his suits, still looks
as if his mother dresses him in the morning and tousles his
hair before sending him off. Critics think the soft-spoken
Stephanopoulos has insufficient heft to speak for the President;
yet this brooding, dark presence has a quiet authority. His
power whisper makes people lean into him, like plants reaching
toward the sun.

    Stephanopoulos has little time these days for his
Stairmaster workouts or visits to his girlfriend, a Philadelphia
lawyer. He is looking to move out of his Adams Morgan apartment
and into a new place. Gripped by his well-known pessimism --
when he wasn't saying, "That's my fault" during the campaign,
he was intoning, "It's over" -- he couldn't let himself believe
that Clinton had won until 5 p.m. on Election Day. "I called the
mansion with a huge case of butterflies because I knew I
wouldn't be talking to the same person anymore. I was on the
speakerphone and said I didn't know what to call him, and
Hillary said, `Just call him Bill.' But, of course, I can't.
When I'm talking about him, I say President-elect, but when I'm
talking to him I still call him Governor. It now seems like a
nickname, a term of endearment."