THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994 TAG: 9406060201
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: 940606 LENGTH: WASHINGTON
The book, ``The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House'' by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, is an intimate look at how the new Democratic president and his stumbling, feuding team of advisers struggled to formulate and adopt an economic program during Clinton's first year.
{REST} It depicts a chaotic policy-making operation, crucial intercessions by Hillary Rodham Clinton and an active policy role played by four outside political advisers.
The four were given open access to the White House, which they used in part to criticize the economic team. They complained that Clinton's fall in popularity was a result of policies being promoted by the economic advisers - or at least the way those policies were packaged for sale to the public. The two groups are described as virtually at war with each other.
The book describes Clinton temper tantrums, and it depicts him as frequently indecisive and reluctant to delegate. It portrays virtually every member of Clinton's inner circle, including Hillary Clinton, as critical of the president's management style.
On the vital economic front, Greenspan is described as a central player, albeit once removed from the inner circle. The book recounts what Woodward calls a crucial meeting between Clinton and Greenspan in Little Rock, Ark., in December 1992, the month before Clinton's inauguration.
During the 2 1/2-hour session, the Fed chairman told the president-elect that reducing the long-term federal budget deficit was ``essential'' and that the economic recovery could fall on its face if policies credible to Wall Street, particularly to bond-traders, were not advanced.
Later, in what became a pattern, the Fed chairman made suggestions, Clinton acted on them, and Greenspan rewarded the action with approving words to Congress, or other public comments meant to signal his approval.
Greenspan outlined to Clinton an economic approach Woodward calls the ``financial markets strategy.'' Policy was to be designed to send a message to Wall Street and ultimately, drive down interest rates.
The theory, and the policy Clinton adopted, bore little resemblance to the economic program on which he had campaigned. Clinton's ``Putting People First'' campaign banner stressed government ``investment'' in programs that would improve the lives of middle-class Americans such as job training, early education, government promotion of cutting-edge technology. A middle-class tax cut and health care for all Americans were sweeteners.
Greenspan's advice to Clinton that a long-term deficit-reduction program was of paramount importance was backed not only by Bentsen, but also by Budget Director Leon E. Panetta and his deputy, Alice M. Rivlin, according to the book. The president's economic advisers, with his assent, quickly jettisoned the tax cut, delayed health care reform, and then added an energy tax and spending cuts.
Clinton's political team - campaign advisers James Carville and Paul Begala, media adviser Mandy Grunwald and pollster Stan Greenberg - are portrayed as horrified and disgusted with this effort to please the market. Carville is quoted as joking he used to want to die and come back in a second life as the pope or president, but now he just wanted to be the bond market because it seemed to run the world.
The four seem to have spent much of last year decrying what that saw as mismanagement at the White House and firing off memos arguing that the president and some of his aides had lost their souls to the deficit-cutters.
Clinton, while intellectually acquiescing in the devastation of his investment programs, raged nonetheless at how it happened. While the book depicts him as highly intelligent and energetic, it recounts several Clinton temper tantrums, quoting senior aide George Stephanopoulos as calling them ``the wave'' - overpowering, prolonged rages that shocked outsiders and often seemed far out of proportion to their cause.
A recurring theme in the book is Clinton's inability to terminate debate and make a decision and his reluctance to delegate.
A memo, written in July as the White House headed into the crucial month leading up to the budget vote, warned apocalyptically that the ``current course, advanced by our economic team and congressional leaders, threatens to sink your popularity further and weaken your presidency.'' The memo, referring to extensive polling and focus groups, recommended dropping the gasoline tax, paring back the deficit-reduction package, and repackaging and reselling an economic program so it was not about taxes but about getting the nation's economic house in order.
The memo prompted Hillary Clinton to go to White House Chief of Staff Thomas F. ``Mack'' McLarty and insist it was ``panic time,'' with no plan to sell the program they were about to send to Congress, no strategy and no decisions made on key elements.
At one crucial meeting last July attended by the president and the first lady, Hillary Clinton chastised both the economic and political teams for ill serving Clinton, for lacking organization and planning, for creating a ``dysfunctional'' White House. She complained they had allowed Clinton to appear to be a ``mechanic-in-chief,'' erased his ``moral voice'' and changed his economic program from a ``values document'' to a bunch of numbers. ``I want to see a plan'' for selling the program, she demanded.
The book goes on sale next week.
by CNB