No Longer Home Alone

THE QUESTION WAS TRICKY, AND BILL CLINTON REalized that he didn't have to answer it. Instead he gestured toward Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen to respond for him, adding with a laugh, "The great thing about having a Cabinet . . ." The sentence was incomplete, but the thought was clear: having chosen a team, the President-elect was no longer alone.

Bentsen, 71 and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was the capstone as Treasury Secretary. Accenting his desire to work with Congress, Clinton tapped Leon Panetta, who chairs the House Budget Committee, as OMB director. Wall Street was represented by Robert Rubin as the head of the new National Economic Council in the White House, and Roger Altman, a Clinton college classmate, as Bentsen's deputy. Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, will be Panetta's deputy. The solid choices signaled Clinton's concern with the deficit and need to reassure business.

Clinton's demeanor on Thursday was a bit stiff, perhaps because those first nominees (save Altman) represented a generation older than his own. How different his mood on Friday, when he was surrounded by appointees whom he genuinely enjoys and who fit his vow of "a new generation of leaders." Harvard political economist Robert Reich, a Rhodes scholar with Clinton, will be Secretary of Labor. Health and Human Services went to Donna Shalala, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and a friend of Hillary Clinton's. Another woman becomes chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers: Laura D'Andrea Tyson, a Berkeley economist. And Carol Browner, a former aide to Al Gore, will head the Environmental Protection Agency. Saturday was another day for allies: as Secretary of Commerce, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown, who aided Clinton with black voters; and as White House chief of staff, Thomas ("Mack") McLarty, a Clinton kindergarten classmate, gubernatorial campaign treasurer and chief executive of a major natural-gas utility, Arkla, Inc.

So far, Clinton shows scant need to surround himself with yes-men and -women. Panetta has been skeptical about the President-elect's oft promised middle-class tax cut, and Rivlin departs from Clinton orthodoxy with her suggestion that states should run public-works programs. Perhaps this will be a combative Administration after all. (See related story on page 37.)