
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993                   TAG: 9305300157
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON APPOINTS GOP AIDE GERGEN HELPED REAGAN GET HIS FIRST TERM ROLLING

President Clinton added an architect of Ronald Reagan's early victories to his inner circle Saturday, tapping a prominent Republican to help set his White House on a more moderate, bipartisan course.

David Gergen was given the title of counselor to the president as Clinton launched a senior staff shuffle. Gergen will assume responsibility for White House communications and press operations at a time Clinton is trying to rebound from a battered public image.

Hiring Gergen away from his post as editor-at-large of U.S. News & World Report magazine was the first action in Clinton's continuing staff review.

With Gergen on board, George Stephanopoulos, Clinton's most visible spokesman since the early days of the 1992 campaign, will surrender his title as communications director and become a senior adviser working more closely with Clinton and chief of staff AP President Clinton gives journalist David Gergen the title of counselor to the president Saturday. Mack McLarty on policy and strategy.

"The message here is that we are rising above politics," Clinton said in introducing Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. "We are going beyond the partisanship that damaged this country so badly in the last several years, to search for new ideas, a new common ground, a new national unity."

During the presidential campaign and transition, Clinton repeatedly promised to chart a bipartisan course and recruit Republicans to his administration.

But until the Gergen appointment, all the top White House jobs went to Democrats, and the overwhelming majority of them to senior Clinton campaign aides. This prompted criticism that Clinton had failed both to reach out to Republicans and to add seasoned Washington hands to his inner circle.

In offering an olive branch to Republicans, Clinton said he wanted to wash from his administration "a tinge that is too partisan and not connected to the mainstream, pro-change, future-oriented politics and policies" that were the anchor of his campaign.

Clinton called Gergen, 51, a "moderate, pro-change patriotic American. The message here is we are rising above politics."

Gergen said his appointment honored Clinton's pledge "to seek a national bipartisan government."

by CNB