If you`re filling out a resume for the Clinton administration, the job you want is secretary of symbolism. If you get it, be prepared to work full time.
Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, swept through town last week, ostensibly to pay courtesy calls on President and Barbara Bush. Both ceremonial meetings went off without a hitch, although neither was the principal focus of public attention.
The Clinton`s two-day sweep of their new hometown was a smash hit with the locals, whether it was the president-elect`s early-morning foray to McDonald`s for decaf, or the first lady-elect`s speech to the Children`s Defense Fund Wednesday night.
If there was a problem, it was that from moment to moment the level of Clinton`s political sophistication threatened to overwhelm his long-range objective of making everybody happy.
Clinton`s 48 hours in D.C. had a comfy, get-acquainted feel, but the trip was about as spontaneous as grand opera.
And the president-elect`s concern that he not appear to be too much the Washington insider kept bumping into the fact that most of his friends and advisers are Washington insiders.
Contradictions kept popping up, and the Clinton campaign apparatus, its engines still humming, kept trying to smooth them over.
On Wednesday, Clinton spent as much time greeting residents of a tough, inner-city neighborhood along Georgia Avenue as he did in the Oval Office with George Bush.
That same night, sending a message about his wife`s independence, he showed up at the Children`s Defense Fund dinner, then left before Hillary Clinton delivered her first formal public remarks since the election.
On Thursday, after the stop for coffee, he went to Capitol Hill and courted party leaders and the House`s committee panjandrums, Democrats Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois and John Dingell of Michigan.
Demonstrating his storied talent for the conciliatory gesture, he made a special trip to the office of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, now the country`s foremost elected Republican.
”Flattery,” said Adlai E. Stevenson, ”is all right if you don`t inhale.” In Washington, just about everyone inhales.
From Capitol Hill, where just about everyone is disliked, Clinton went back to his hotel for a meeting he`d requested with everyone`s favorite general, Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
From there, it was on to dinner at Pamela Harriman`s Georgetown manse, an affair that became the hottest Washington ticket since Mikhail Gorbachev hit town.
In many ways, the Harriman dinner was a public relations trap for Clinton. On the campaign trail for more than a year, he had kept his distance from the Democratic Establishment in Washington. The Arkansas governor milked the idea that he was not ”of Washington,” that he didn`t have much to do with the inside-the-Beltway game of lobbying and pushing influence and access. He`s made an elaborate fuss over lobbying rules since the election, although he turned his transition over to Vernon Jordan, a consummate inside player who sits on dozens of corporate boards.
Now, there Clinton was on fashionable N Street, presumably swapping phone numbers over the canapes with lawyers, lobbyists and congressional wannabes, folks such as Robert Strauss, the onetime Democratic Party chairman and Bush acolyte.
Many Democrats recall that it was Strauss who went to Moscow as Bush`s ambassador in early 1991, when it looked as if the 1992 election might be scrubbed due to lack of interest.
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In a speech at the March 1991 Gridiron dinner in Washington, then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III joked that in the absence of a credible Democratic candidate, his old friend Bob Strauss himself might run for president.
”Of course, he`d have to become a Democrat,” Baker sniffed.
Now, with the political world turned upside down, dining with Bob Strauss was not the image many of Clinton`s advisers wanted conveyed.
On the other hand, Harriman, a longtime financial supporter of the party and its successful nominee, had earned the right to play host to the first couple.
In the end, Clinton even managed to finesse the Harriman soiree.
It was transformed from an intimate supper for the select-a sit-down crowd of perhaps 25-to a stand-up bash for more than 100.
His balancing act complete, the president-elect left the Georgetown dinner early and headed back to Little Rock. Not a bad week for a country boy.