The Professor and the 400-Lb. Gorilla

By HUGH SIDEY WASHINGTON

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, blue polka-dot bow tie flagging his considerable presence, walked into the Oval Office last week, a 6-ft. 4-in. "loose cannon," as the Clinton crew viewed him. Moynihan coolly surveyed the office paintings, indicating his reservations, checked to be sure the elegant desk used by John Kennedy (a Moynihan idol) was still there, settled on a couch and told the President of the United States, 20 years his junior, that the BTU energy tax was dead, moribund, finished.

That was yet another in a series of clipped pronouncements the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has made in public and private that have blown large holes in the listing hulk of fellow Democrat Bill Clinton's economic package. Moynihan is not a conventional party leader. The Hill's loyal opposition has whispered that he is "chairman by fluke." Even Democrats were stunned when former committee chairman Lloyd Bentsen accepted the job as Secretary of the Treasury, which moved Moynihan to the mountaintop, an unproven leader. In fact, Moynihan is the Senate's most eccentric, brilliant and fearless purveyor of uncomfortable truth. He has probably shaped as much national social and economic policy in his 32 years in Washington in various jobs as any other person. "He may be viewed as a kind of Ivy League Throttlebottom," declared a wary admirer, "but he is formidable -- and absolutely necessary."

In that Oval Office rendezvous, Clinton was still weaving cosmic dreams for a summer of revived leadership. "I would love to get this bill out by the Tokyo economic summit," which begins July 7, he told the small group before him. "I'd go to the meeting like a 400-lb. gorilla."

The others there -- Senate majority leader George Mitchell, Budget Director Leon Panetta and Bentsen -- said little. "Mr. President," intoned Moynihan in that professorial voice, "what if you have to go to Tokyo after a bill has been defeated?" Clinton paused a second or two. "I couldn't go," he replied.

That was the moment when Clinton truly understood his economic plans would be dramatically rewritten in a shadowy hallway on the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, where Moynihan dwells at one end and Oklahoma's bumptious David Boren resides at the other. The round of frantic conferences began among the Finance Committee's Democrats and White House handlers. The White House designated Secretary Bentsen to ride shotgun on Moynihan. But in that meeting Bentsen was little more than a weary husk, hollowed out by frantic European junketing. Besides, there is the underlying suspicion that Bentsen is really more in sympathy with Moynihan than with his Administration. The question remained, to use the words of a powerful lobbyist, "Can the quirky Moynihan put together a coalition?" If he does not, the Senate leadership may try to brush him aside. A daunting task, but the Senator lost a little luster last week with the disclosure that he had scheduled, then canceled, a $5,000-a-person fund raiser for lobbyists on July 19, likely to be a crucial time in the debate.

By all measures, Moynihan and Clinton, both political intellectuals, should be a dynamic duo. But Clinton started out ignoring the Senator. That was remedied with a cozy White House dinner of men and wives. Still, the middle- road campaign Clinton became a left-laner once in the White House. Moynihan is both liberal and conservative, intrigued by diverse economic theories but also horrified by the prospect of immense new programs and bureaucracies. He even lofted his doubts in the presence of Hillary Rodham Clinton, health-care czarina. How wise would it be, he wondered out loud, to take over even more planning for American life? The courtly Senator admits the relationship is "cordial, but not intimate."

Moynihan is notably devoted to self-interest, but at the moment party loyalty runs a close second. "There will be a bill," he declares. "My job is to get 11 committee votes." He knows, however, that delivering that tally will be only the beginning of the battle.