Controversies to Haunt Clinton in Second Term

WASHINGTON —  Now that the pomp and partying of the inauguration are behind him, President Clinton faces the harsh prospect of a second term pocked by civil trials, congressional investigations and public hearings on controversies past and present.

The president would like nothing more than to make them all go away: the pushy independent counsel, the phalanx of congressional interrogators and the woman who accuses him of sexual harassment.

But they won’t. And Clinton’s aides and adversaries agree that it all adds up to a year of potential peril for his presidency, one that could leave an indelible stain on his legacy:

* Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel investigating the Clintons’ actions surrounding the failed Whitewater land deal before they came to Washington, is expected to produce indictments of some of the president’s associates later this winter.

* Congressional committees plan public hearings as early as March on questionable fund-raising efforts by the Democratic National Committee that helped finance the president’s 1996 reelection bid.

* By late June, the Supreme Court will issue a ruling on whether a civil lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who claims that, as governor of the state, Clinton exposed himself and made a sexual overture to her, can go forward while he is in office.

And other dormant controversies--like the scores of FBI background files that showed up inexplicably at the White House or the questionable firing of the White House travel office staff three years ago--could develop new life as a result of congressional action or civil suits.

“It’s never going to be over,” says Larry Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia who has written extensively about the Clinton administration and scandals. “There’s a grab bag of scandals, and the fact that they’re not connected almost makes them worse because they touch on different parts of Clinton.”

The White House strategy for managing the array of allegations, accusations, investigations and charges is simple: Accentuate the positive and ignore the negative. Most White House staff members have been directed to leave the controversies to incoming White House Counsel Charles Ruff and a small damage-control squad led by Lanny Davis.

Clinton Says He’ll Be Paying Scant Attention

The president himself has stressed his intention to pay as little attention as possible to the unfolding dramas of Whitewater, the Democratic National Committee fund-raising fiasco, the sexual-harassment case and the rest.

He has worried aloud to acquaintances that getting caught up in them would prevent him from being the kind of person America needs as president.

Asked whether it bothered him that the Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments in the Jones case only a week before his inaugural, Clinton said that he was not paying “much attention” to the matter. “It’s not going to cause me any difficulties because I’m going to do my job,” he said.

That’s not to say that Clinton is not troubled by the allegations, investigations and trials--and the headlines they generate.

“I don’t care who you are, it leaves scars,” outgoing White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said in an interview earlier this month.

Clinton, however, has learned to deal better with negative press and new allegations on a day-to-day basis, Panetta said.

“Once he gets it off his chest--and he may get it off in the early morning--he is focused on what is happening that day,” he said. “The president’s sense is that he’s got to keep his eye on the target” of his positive agenda: balancing the budget, reforming welfare and making education more affordable.

Several past and present White House officials said that during the first year or so of his administration, Clinton and many on his staff let themselves be distracted by the accusation of the moment.

“We’ve learned that lesson,” said John Podesta, the deputy chief of staff whose duties include working with the White House counsel. “We get preoccupied with that stuff at our peril.”

The White House is hoping that the political bruising Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) took because of his role in the Senate Whitewater hearings will discourage other Republicans from renewing the Whitewater attack or launching one on another issue.

“The silver lining is that, if they’re excessively partisan, it hurts them,” Podesta said.

Still, presidential scholars warn that if history is any guide, Clinton will have a difficult time evading the “second-term jinx.”

“Clinton has been remarkably unaffected in his political standing by all the scandals swirling around him,” said David Mason, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. “It could be that that phenomenon will continue. But the history of this in second terms doesn’t bode well for the president.”

The most recent example of a second-term president who was stung by scandal is Ronald Reagan.

At the least, the Iran-Contra controversy nearly consumed Reagan for several months of his presidency in 1987 and diminished his effectiveness through the rest of the term, according to A.B. Culvahouse, who was Reagan’s White House counsel in his second term.

No matter what strategy Clinton pursues, Culvahouse argued, the controversies will “be a huge distraction” because the president must be personally involved in decisions that could affect his personal and professional future. They will also inevitably “absorb some of the president’s political capital,” he added.

In the Reagan administration, the political fallout from Iran-Contra--the scheme in which profits from the secret sale of arms to Iran were routed to Nicaragua’s Contras--were considered at least partly responsible for the failed nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court and an embarrassing override of the 1987 highway bill, Culvahouse said.

Nonetheless, Culvahouse and others said that they believe the Clinton administration is pursuing an effective damage-control strategy by focusing on the positive aspects of the president’s agenda.

“Bill Clinton needs to use the allegations of scandal to motivate him to focus on his priorities because a lame-duck president has diminishing chips to play,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff under Reagan. “If he responds every day to allegations of scandal--if he gets mired in the muck--he will be diverted from his governing priorities.”

A More Disciplined President

Following that advice will require tremendous discipline on the part of the president and his staff, officials from both the Clinton and Reagan administrations said.

Although Clinton was frequently criticized for lacking discipline early in his presidency, insiders and outsiders agree that he is far more organized now.

Even with discipline, though, Clinton cannot prevent controversy from bubbling into the news as events warrant.

For instance, the Supreme Court hearing challenging whether Jones’ sexual-harassment suit can go forward while Clinton is president made the front pages of most newspapers even though the president and his staff tried their best to avoid comment on it.

“If you have an event, it bounces up,” said James Carville, a political consultant and loyal Clinton defender. Since the Supreme Court is not expected to rule until early this summer, “it will fizzle down until June and then it will fizzle up again,” he added.

Unlike Clinton and top White House officials, Carville has been willing to fight for the president publicly. He has accused Starr, the independent Whitewater counsel, of conducting a partisan witch hunt. But Carville’s counterattack has had the unintended consequence of producing even more headlines.

It appears now that Starr will not file charges against the president or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to sources familiar with the investigation. Nor are the Clintons likely to be tied directly to indictments of their associates on charges of obstructing justice and perjury for covering up the investigation into Whitewater, the sources said.

But Starr shows no signs of finishing his investigation, so Whitewater could continue to pester the president well into his second term.

Potentially more pressing is the question of what congressional investigators will find as they delve into Democratic and White House records on fund-raising for the 1996 campaign. Although Clinton’s advisors insist that nothing will link Clinton to improprieties, embarrassing information already has surfaced. For example, Clinton, apparently unknowingly, entertained a Chinese arms dealer at the White House during a coffee for contributors.

Sen. Thompson and Fund-Raising Hearings

The eyes of Washington will be on Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), a former minority counsel during the Watergate hearings, who has assembled a team of lawyers to ferret through the evidence. He plans to start public hearings in early March.

In the House, which has been contending with its own scandals concerning ethics violations by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the Clinton investigatory effort is less organized. But several committees are considering taking action and already are accumulating documents.

Even if Clinton ultimately is vindicated, analysts say he is likely to be tainted by the process.

“Clinton could win every court case and it wouldn’t matter,” said Sabato, the University of Virginia professor. “One-third to 40% of Americans do not trust him and do not believe he has the personal and moral standards to be an American president. That percentage can only go up as the bad news accumulates over time.”

Times staff writers Sara Fritz and Alan C. Miller contributed to this story.