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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 16, 1993                   TAG: 9306160214
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON DEFENDS HIS RECORD

"This is the most decisive presidency you've had in a long time on all the big issues that matter," he said at an impromptu news conference.

The president has been widely criticized for shifting positions in Senate budget negotiations, his nomination and abandonment of Lani Guinier for a key Justice Department job and the course he followed in selecting a Supreme Court nominee.

On a day when the news was good for a change - inflation was reported low, and there was bipartisan praise for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his nominee for the Supreme Court - Clinton wasted no time launching a counterattack.

"If somebody had told you at Christmastime . . . that by June 1st we'd have unemployment under 7 percent for the first time in a year and a half, 755,000 new jobs, a 20-year low in interest rates, a seven-year high in housing sales, that the United States would have led a global effort to support Boris Yeltsin," the president said, " . . . I'd say most people would think that was a pretty decisive record."

Clinton said he is confident the economy will continue to strengthen if Congress passes an economic program consistent with his key principles.

The president contended that because his budget seeks to cut federal deficits through a combination of unpopular tax increases and cuts in spending on popular programs, he is pushing "much tougher decisions than were required in the Reagan budget in 1981."

Questioned about a public impression that his own indecision led him to back down on such issues as intervention in Bosnia and the shape of the energy tax in his budget, Clinton responded aggressively.

"Let me tell you something about Bosnia," he said. "On Bosnia I made a decision," but U.S. allies and the United Nations refused to go along.

"Our allies decided that they weren't prepared to go that far at this time. They asked me to wait, and they said they would not support it. I didn't change my mind."

Clinton did admit "one big regret" about the process that led to his nomination of Ginsburg on Monday. "I regret the leaks," he said, referring to a flood of White House tips to the news media on various favorites during the selection process. "We ought to do better than that."

Those leaks identified Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Boston federal appeals Judge Stephen Breyer as likely nominees and subjected them to intense publicity that led to questions about why they failed to get the job.