White House Set for ‘Nasty, Brutish and Long’ Fight

WASHINGTON — Get ready for a long war.

Only five days ago, senior members of President Clinton’s staff--seriously discussing whether he could even give a State of the Union speech--were contemplating the possibility that his administration could simply, and rapidly, collapse over allegations that he had carried on an affair with a White House intern and counseled her to lie about it.

Now, with the speech widely hailed as a success, with a White House counteroffensive launched against Clinton’s accusers and with the first week of allegations behind them, the president and his aides are making plans for a war of attrition that could go on for months--perhaps years.

“We’re settling in for an engagement that will be nasty, brutish and long,” said a senior White House official. “That’s a shame, but it’s a reality.”

Added a former aide who is still frequently consulted by the Clintons: “This is an endurance test.”

That, in turn, plays to one of Clinton’s greatest strengths--his ability to hang on. A president who is determined to stay in office has tremendous advantages. Those natural advantages are magnified in this case by a host of factors that range from the popularity of Clinton’s programs to the acknowledged reluctance of many Republican members of Congress to contemplate an all-out battle that centers on a subject--sexual fidelity--on which many of them might be vulnerable as well.

The prospect of a protracted battle certainly will not thrill the large number of Americans who tell pollsters and interviewers that they already have heard too much about Clinton’s private life and the investigations into it.

Nonetheless, from the standpoint of the White House, the outlook is far less grim than it was a few days ago.

At Legal War With Starr

Clinton and his aides have been at legal war with independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for more than three years, noted Democratic political consultant Mandy Grunwald. That is longer than the amount of time left in Clinton’s tenure.

“This is different, but it’s not that different,” she said.

A senior administration official made a similar point: “Given that Ken Starr has been scratching at this for 3 1/2 years, he’s not going to stop in a week or a month. . . . We’ve got to fight our way through it. We’re prepared do it. This is not going away in a week or a month.”

Another key advisor put the situation this way: “The mood in the White House has now shifted. Nobody questions how tough it is. But there’s been a strong shoring up.

“Last week,” the advisor said, “everybody thought that the end of the world had come.”

Clinton is clearly not out of trouble yet--not even close. For the foreseeable future, his administration will remain hostage to each piece of evidence that surfaces from Starr’s investigation.

Pollsters say a large number of Americans appear to be withholding judgment on the allegations against Clinton--waiting to see what the former intern, Monica S. Lewinsky, has to say and whether, if she contradicts Clinton, she appears credible. Once Lewinsky tells her story, if those undecided Americans find her compelling, Clinton’s standing could drop rapidly.

Moreover, even if Clinton does hang on, a huge gap separates mere survival from effective governing.

Already, Clinton faces a Republican Congress that opposes many of his initiatives. On most issues, his travails are not going to make them any more likely to vote with him.

There are some exceptions. Particularly in the foreign arena, Clinton’s problems may have the unexpected result of bolstering his policies. On Iraq, for example, Republicans and Democrats have been going out of their way in recent days to make an overt show of unity, fearing that in the current context, even small policy disagreements may be misperceived overseas.

On a second group of issues, White House advisors and Democratic strategists are confident that Clinton’s proposals are popular enough that they will prevail regardless of how the public views his personal situation.

“Unlike some other proposals in the past, in which the president was often alone even in his own party, most of his proposals this time around enjoy substantial initial popularity,” said William Galston, a former Clinton advisor now on the faculty of the University of Maryland.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, for example, pointed to overnight polls showing that about 85% of voters agree with Clinton’s argument that any future budget surplus should be held in reserve until Social Security is reformed, rather than used for tax cuts, as Republicans have proposed.

“Republicans are going to be loath to be on the 15% side of an 85%-15% issue,” he said.

Clintons Performs ‘Under Pressure’

Even outside observers who have been critical of Clinton in the past share some of that view.

“He wants to fix Social Security; everybody wants Social Security fixed. He wants to make some real investments in people; that’s a popular position too,” said Walter Williams, co-director of the Trust in Government Project at the University of Washington’s Graduate School of Public Affairs in Seattle.

“Assuming he survives,” Williams said, “there are ways in which he could even derive some benefit.”

Not long ago, Clinton and his aides were forced to defend against the charge that the president had lost interest in his job and was primarily focused on perfecting his golf swing.

Clinton “performs better under pressure,” Williams noted. “The second half of the first term is a case in point. He is a fantastic counterpuncher. . . . That’s been his greatest gift: the ability to recover from wounds.”

On other subjects, however, the allegations against Clinton “will probably make it more difficult for him to succeed at his agenda. And it may make it easier for Republicans to prevail on our agenda,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

That will be particularly true on issues where Clinton’s position is already relatively weak--trade, for example.

“He couldn’t get that one through last year when everything was great,” noted one White House official, referring to Clinton’s request that Congress grant him “fast-track” authority to negotiate trade agreements.

Still, after the events of the last week, Clinton’s aides view problems with their program on Capitol Hill as the least of their worries.

“The place got hit by an atomic bomb last Wednesday” when the Lewinsky allegations first became public, said the former aide. “It was a total meltdown. They were shell-shocked.”

Since then, the White House has begun to pull itself back together. The most important move, aides and advisors say, was simply finding something to say to the public.

Actually, Clinton’s spokespeople say three things: denials of the specific charges, attacks on Starr and appeals to the public to withhold judgment and “wait until the truth comes out in all of these matters,” as Hillary Rodham Clinton put it in an ABC television interview Wednesday.

That message, in turn, has given Democratic members of Congress the cover they need to continue to stand with Clinton, preventing a stampede that could have rapidly undermined his position.

With congressional Democrats holding steady, Republicans “are completely ambivalent” about how hard they should push, said a House Republican leadership aide.

Not only is there the risk of taking on a president who has repeatedly proven able to best the Republicans in political battle, Republicans are not at all sure they would be better off with a President Al Gore than with Clinton, noted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the third-ranking member of the House leadership.

The chief of staff to a House Republican put the matter more bluntly: “Right now, the political calculus is that Democrats want to get rid of this as soon as possible. Republicans want to keep it around a while.”

Substantively, as Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) noted, over the last year, Republicans have figured out how to work with Clinton--much to the consternation of many congressional Democrats.

“There might be some Republicans who have spent years trying to bring this president down,” Drier said, “but there is a sense today that we have some shared goals with the president.”

Clinton Gets ‘Cover in Congress’

In addition, Kyl said, Republicans are anxious not to lend credence to Mrs. Clinton’s accusation that the charges against the president are simply part of a partisan conspiracy.

Finally, as one senior Republican senator put it, asking for anonymity, Clinton “gets cover in Congress” because many members fear having their own sexual conduct held up for scrutiny.

Talk of a protracted struggle worries at least some Democrats, who fear that voters, angry at Clinton’s behavior, will take out their aggressions on his party in this fall’s elections.

Times staff writers Janet Hook, Alan C. Miller, Doyle McManus, Jodi Wilgoren and Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.