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

DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994                   TAG: 9409070046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: DAVID A. BRODER THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Long

PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARS GROWING CRITICAL OF CLINTON'S PERFORMANCE

When Charles O. Jones saw the TV clip of Bill Clinton pounding the lectern so hard at a health care rally that the seal of the president clattered to the ground, he took it as a sign that Clinton is still campaigning so much he has yet to move into the constitutional office to which he was elected.

After recounting the anecdote, Jones, a University of Wisconsin professor and president of the American Political Science Association, told an APSA panel here over the weekend that, in a real sense, Clinton ``has yet to form his presidency.''

``Same verdict as last year,'' said Princeton's Fred Greenstein. ``The jury is still out.''

But the jury of academic experts on the presidency is increasingly critical of Clinton, complaining of a lack of focus in his agenda and a lack of seriousness in his stewardship of government.

Some are drawing larger lessons, arguing that Clinton's problems suggest that the ``rhetorical presidency,'' oriented to mobilizing public opinion to move the levers of power in Washington, may have ended with the Cold War and the disappearance of the perpetual crisis mentality it engendered.

The APSA was founded by Woodrow Wilson, and academics in this field retain a tradition of favoring liberal, activist presidents like Clinton. But most of their judgments on Clinton were unflattering.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the historian and one-time aide to President Kennedy, described Clinton's free-form White House as ``government by bull session.''

He said the president, ``suffering from the delusion that he can carry Florida in 1996,'' has given Cuban Americans more control over foreign policy than any domestic interest group has exercised ``since the China lobby in the 1950s.'' The role of the Congressional Black Caucus in shaping Haiti policy is an equally ``ominous development,'' he said.

Clinton's own traits work against his success, some of the professors suggested. Greenstein said Clinton's ``almost unnatural energy, optimism and ebullience'' are combined with ``an extraordinary lack of self-discipline.'' The result, he said, is that for Clinton, ``the phrase White House organization is almost an oxymoron.''

Taking a more upbeat view, Nelson Polsby of the University of California at Berkeley argued that Clinton has changed the agenda in Washington as much as President Reagan did in his first two years and has enjoyed greater success with Congress than the press and public acknowledge.

But Polsby also blamed Clinton for ``the unprecedented turmoil in the four great departments of government, State, Defense, Treasury and Justice,'' saying the personnel upheavals and policy reverses indicate ``the president made those appointments simply on the basis of what he thought were the proper political criteria and did not ask if they could do the job.''

Clinton got higher marks from two female professors who complained that the panels on his presidency were virtually monopolized by men.

Beverly Kahn of Fairfield University said there was insufficient attention to ``the emphasis on community and citizenship and altruism in the Clinton agenda,'' an approach she said appealed to women's values but was resisted by the largely male Washington power structure.

Barbara Sinclair of the University of California-Riverside said, ``Clinton is trying to teach the country that freedom is meaningless without the security the community and the state can provide. You're not free if you can't change jobs without losing health insurance or you can't go to the 7-Eleven without being mugged.''

Clinton, in the view of virtually all the academics, is using the ``outsider'' approach to the presidency, as did Reagan and President Carter. ``His answer to governing,'' said George C. Edwards III of Texas A&M, ``is the perpetual campaign.''

The tactic is natural for a man who started in Arkansas politics as an attorney general and governor with only a two-year term, Edwards said. It was reinforced by constant need to expand the popular base of support for his ambitious legislative program.

With the notable exception of NAFTA, none of Clinton's exercises in public persuasion have had the effect he hoped for, and he has been forced to wheel-and-deal for squeaker victories on Capitol Hill.

``The presidency has lost its great prop of popularity, the Cold War,'' Cornell's Theodore J. Lowi argued, and without that, every domestic fight a president takes on is likely to erode his public support, by alienating some constituency group.

Clinton's problem in pursuing ``the rhetorical presidency'' is heightened, several scholars said, by the huge budget deficits he inherited from the Reagan-Bush era, which limit his ability to pay for programs that measure up to his own descriptions of the nation's needs.

The Reagan legacy creates a basic political dilemma for Clinton, some of the professors said. His core support, Edwards said, has come from traditional Democrats - older New Dealers, minorities, labor unionists and liberals - who hoped Clinton would fulfill the promise to ``reverse the economic policies of the '80s.''

But he also campaigned as a ``New Democrat,'' ready to produce leaner, smaller government and ``end welfare as we know it.'' The public remains confused about his real goal, Edwards said, so he gets little credit when Congress acts on either of those agendas.

by CNB