On the Scene

WHENEVER Bill Clinton has gotten in trouble as President, he has returned to the ideas and devices that worked in his campaign. In trouble over the emphasis on gays in the military during his first weeks in office. he suddenly started talking about welfare reform, though he had no proposal on that issue and still doesn’t. He has lately stance. talx-.ng u up aga a. Heading to Tokyo for a G-7 Summit that might have made him look like the globetrotting George Bush, neglecting the economic plight of Mr. and Mrs. America, he stopped in San Francisco to call for a Worldwide jobs summit in the united States. Once in Tokyo, Mr. chinton and his heutenants missed no chance to say that whole meeting was about jobs in America Back in Washington with the House-Senate ting under way, he reconstituted the ” war room” that helped direct his cam Mr. Hume is chief White House correspondent for ABC News. paign, this time to run the offensive for his budget. Mr. Clinton is widely viewed in Washington as a man who learns quickly from his successes and failures, and those of others. But his campaign has repeatedly gotten him in trouble as President, and returning to campaign mode will almost certainly do so again.

There has been much speculation about why Mr. Clinton never had the customary honeymoon with the Washington media. Some have blamed it on supposedly hard-boiled regulars in the White House press corps seeking to prove they could be just as rough on a Democrat as they had been on George Bush. Another theory has it that the newcomers to the White House press room who got there via covering Mr. Clinton’s campaign were determined to prove that they, too, could be tough. There has even been some outraged finger-pointing from liberals who have now determined that the press corps they cheered on during the previous 12 years has become a cynical lot hopelessly preoccupied with such trivial matters as travel-office firings and presidential haircuts. Same have even argued that the President’s personal aloofness toward reporters and the high handedness of his spokesmen, who closed off the press secretary’s office, infuriated the pampered press, which then took out its anger on Mr. Chinton, This stuff is fun to talk about but it has little to do with the reality of what happened to Mr. Chinton in his early months in office.

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Brit Hume

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WHENEVER Bill Clinton has gotten in trouble as President, he has returned to the ideas and devices that worked in his campaign. In trouble over the emphasis on gays in the military during his first weeks in office. he suddenly started talking about welfare reform, though he had no proposal on that issue and still doesn’t. He has lately stance. talx-.ng u up aga a. Heading to Tokyo for a G-7 Summit that might have made him look like the globetrotting George Bush, neglecting the economic plight of Mr. and Mrs. America, he stopped in San Francisco to call for a Worldwide jobs summit in the united States. Once in Tokyo, Mr. chinton and his heutenants missed no chance to say that whole meeting was about jobs in America Back in Washington with the House-Senate ting under way, he reconstituted the ” war room” that helped direct his cam Mr. Hume is chief White House correspondent for ABC News. paign, this time to run the offensive for his budget. Mr. Clinton is widely viewed in Washington as a man who learns quickly from his successes and failures, and those of others. But his campaign has repeatedly gotten him in trouble as President, and returning to campaign mode will almost certainly do so again.

There has been much speculation about why Mr. Clinton never had the customary honeymoon with the Washington media. Some have blamed it on supposedly hard-boiled regulars in the White House press corps seeking to prove they could be just as rough on a Democrat as they had been on George Bush. Another theory has it that the newcomers to the White House press room who got there via covering Mr. Clinton’s campaign were determined to prove that they, too, could be tough. There has even been some outraged finger-pointing from liberals who have now determined that the press corps they cheered on during the previous 12 years has become a cynical lot hopelessly preoccupied with such trivial matters as travel-office firings and presidential haircuts. Same have even argued that the President’s personal aloofness toward reporters and the high handedness of his spokesmen, who closed off the press secretary’s office, infuriated the pampered press, which then took out its anger on Mr. Chinton, This stuff is fun to talk about but it has little to do with the reality of what happened to Mr. Chinton in his early months in office.