Remaking of The President

By MARGARET CARLSON WASHINGTON

In the middle of the afternoon last Wednesday and in a rare break from meetings on Bosnia, the White House first team met in the Roosevelt Room to get the Administration back "on message." There were the President and Hillary, Vice President Al Gore and Tipper and the senior staff, plus Democratic National Committee chairman David Wilhelm and campaign consultants < Paul Begala and James Carville. The day before, the President had surprised reporters by admitting in the Oval Office that he could use a little "tighter coordination" and "a little better focus."

Hillary, the Clinton who has both focus and coordination already, said people had to understand what the President was trying to accomplish and the best way to do that was for him to resume trips outside the Beltway. Thus Clinton is scheduled to visit Cleveland, Chicago and New York City this week to sell his budget proposals. One of those present said Carville pointed to Clinton and said it was important that the President should not become part of the "culture of Washington" that prefers more of the same over change. Clinton has begun quoting some of Carville's latest folk wisdom: "If you never want to stumble, stand still."

The White House knew matters had deteriorated when Clinton, making a routine appearance at the White House Correspondents Association's annual dinner the previous weekend, bombed with jokes about Senate minority leader Robert Dole and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh that turned out not to be funny. The dinners are one of the few times that the permanent Washington establishment is primed to fawn over the President. But the range of acceptable presidential behavior is narrow, from self-deprecation to groveling, and by no means can the evening be used to settle scores -- even with the person who killed your stimulus package. The dinner produced three days of apologies and retractions and gave Dole the opportunity to charge that Clinton has a bunch of "sophomoric kids working for him, engaging in minor-league politics."

Clinton moved quickly to add one major grown-up to his staff: Roy Neel, the top adviser to Vice President Al Gore for the past 15 years, joined Mark Gearan as deputy to chief of staff Thomas McLarty. Neel and Gearan will handle the day-to-day operations, allowing McLarty to concentrate on minding Clinton and worrying about long-range planning, which will initially mean holding three-day-a-week 8:30 a.m. conferences aimed at shepherding what remains of Clinton's economic plan through Congress. Neel at 47 exceeds the median age in the White House by at least a decade and brings adult supervision to the place. But no one has a mean word to say about Neel, and therein may lie a problem. Says a White House aide: "We now have the three nicest guys in the world -- Mack, Mark and Roy -- in the chief of staff operation."

% One of the people who could make the White House stop behaving like a dorm on a perpetual all-nighter is Harold Ickes, who took himself out of the running for the deputy chief of staff job in January when an old allegation surfaced about a union he once represented having ties to organized crime. The President consults Ickes frequently, and he will be spending time at the White House this week. Associates urging Ickes to do more say that he does not want to until the union inquiry is completed.

The other gray-haired presence called in by the President is old friend and former Inaugural chairman Harry Thomason, who will temporarily move into an office in the Old Executive Office Building. One aide says Thomason is the perfect person to bring in: "He has three hit television shows, $40 million and so no agenda but the President's." What will Thomason be doing? "Whatever is asked," Thomason replies.

The wisdom about Clinton is that he doesn't make the same mistake twice, but he can make the same mistake for a long time. Even in a week when the President was trying to focus, he introduced an $8 billion city-renewal plan, legislation for campaign-finance reform, a scaled-back immunization program and prepared to send up a pared-down stimulus package. He is as slow to criticize his staff as to end a meeting, as quick to solicit advice as to ignore it, and he has a weakness for imposing unrealistic deadlines on himself. He admitted to this final failing last week, remembering that it was his self-imposed Christmas deadline on filling his Cabinet that led him to pick Zoe Baird as Attorney General. When he decided this week to postpone announcing his health-care plan until mid-June, he did so because he doesn't want to have a legislative pileup. But he also admitted, says an aide, that "getting it right is more important than getting it out on time."

Staff changes are likely to continue this week while Clinton takes his program on the road again, trying to shore up his 48% job-approval rating. But the one thing the toughest staff can't do is put him to bed. On Wednesday, after the President finished a round of late-night meetings on Bosnia, he went back to the residence and unwound watching the Los Angeles Clippers-Houston Rockets basketball game. He did not get to bed until well after midnight.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 1,000 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on April 28-29 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 3%.

CAPTION: Has Bill Clinton paid enough attention to the country's most important problems?