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

DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993                   TAG: 9309110259
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GETTING BETTER AT THE NAMING GAME

EASY Senate confirmation last week of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the newest justice to the U.S. Supreme Court offers hope that maybe, finally, the Clinton administration has stopped shooting itself in the foot when it's time to make a high-ranking appointment.

It contrasted sharply, anyway, with the president's struggle trying to get a deficit-reduction plan approved.

Arriving at Ginsburg's name had been a messy process. Too, there had been signs of presidential spinelessness as names floated about, only to evaporate in a mist of quiet embarrassment.

But when Ginsburg's name was launched, it bobbed easily through choppy political waves. She was a life preserver, embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike with what seemed like relief.

Zoe and Kimba faded from memory. Lani lost some of her power to reproach.

The appointment of Ginsburg, in fact, lived up to the promise that Bill Clinton brought to Washington when he told the country that his presidency would worry less about partisanship than about competence.

It was a promise that started to be fulfilled when, after floundering first over Zoe Baird, then Kimba Wood, in his search for an attorney general, Clinton landed a prize with Janet Reno, a tough woman with a soft heart and a clear mind whose appointment was hailed by liberals and conservatives alike.

That success, though, was followed by the painful controversy over Lani Guinier's nomination to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department, and it looked dismayingly as if the administration had simply had a stroke of luck with Reno, and had not found its footing after all.

But then there was Ginsburg. And Ginsburg was followed most recently by Louis Freeh, Clinton's choice for FBI director.

Described as a street-smart federal district judge from Manhattan, Freeh had been a federal prosecutor conducting drug and mail bomb investigations for a decade, and an FBI agent fighting racketeering for five years before that. It's hard to imagine a better person to raise both the stature and the morale of the nation's top law-enforcement agency, so long under the shadow of its now-fired director, William Sessions, and his lengthy ethics investigation.

But it's easy to imagine a Democratic president making a choice other than Freeh, who was appointed to the federal bench by Republican George Bush.

Three superb appointments is not exactly a streak. But it's a nice, gentle, winning roll. Let's hope the president keeps rolling.

by CNB