Newswatch

By STANLEY W. CLOUD

Three months ago, Bill Clinton was being compared to Ronald Reagan as a master of political communications. Now with all his troubles in Congress and the nation, Clinton has called in the Great Communicator's communicator to help. Journalist David Gergen, who served Reagan as communications director and helped sell Reaganomics to the voters, will soon be trying to do the same thing for Clintonomics. Gergen replaces George Stephanopoulos, who, along with press secretary Dee Dee Myers, has seen life turn decidedly sour.

These past few weeks, only a sadist could take pleasure in watching Stephanopoulos sputter as he tried to explain to skeptical -- and even scornful -- reporters the abject reinstatement of five employees from the White House travel office who had been summarily fired a week earlier. And only Saturday Night Live's writers could enjoy the spectacle of Myers trying to defend the White House's farcical attempt to turn a female TV reporter into a presidential makeup artist during a Clinton visit to New Hampshire. Why had a White House staff member asked the local journalist, who was about to interview the President, to powder Clinton's nose? Because, Myers said, no one else was available.

Such moments have become commonplace as relations between the President and the press have deteriorated. Many reporters and editors who once gave candidate and President-elect Clinton generally favorable coverage are today, like the country, underwhelmed. He and his staff are committing, in their view, the one unforgivable sin short of criminality: incompetence.

But the chasm that has opened between Clinton and the men and women who cover him is explained by more than the White House mistakes and the press's bullyboy tendencies. For one thing, this President and his young staff don't really seem to like journalists very much. On election night a photographer asked campaign strategist James Carville to move slightly so he could get a shot of the victor. Carville refused and later bragged that since the Clintonites had won the election, they "didn't need the press anymore." That feeling was apparently shared by others. Practically the first thing Stephanopoulos did after occupying his West Wing office was to order reporters kept out of it unless they had an appointment. No presidential spokesperson had ever tried such a thing before, and last weekend Gergen said he would consider reversing the order. The Clinton White House also had its end-run press strategy, whereby Clinton used talk shows and electronic town meetings, rather than dreary old press conferences with the dreary old national press corps, to commune with the people. To aggravate things further, Stephanopoulos & Co. shook up the White House travel office, which, however mismanaged, did provide first-class creature comforts -- at first-class prices -- to reporters on presidential trips.

Late last week, as things were collapsing around him, Stephanopoulos reflected on what he thought had to be done: "We need to make sure that the press knows Bill Clinton a little better and then do what we can to see that he doesn't present too good a target." Dave Gergen may be able to help there. In the end, though, it's not what a President's aides do to or for reporters that counts. It's what a President does to or for the country. In other words, where relations with the press are concerned, the only thing that really succeeds is success.