Clinton on the High Road

...Newport, Oregon, population 7,500, an attractive tourist spot on Yaquina Bay, is proud of its Yaquina Head Ecological Interpretive Center, now under construction, where the flora and fauna of the region will be displayed...

...The Energy Department says that would result in some 7,000 homes going un weatherized and the loss of about 700 jobs...

...Awaiting Senate action on a raft of tough House legislation, the President still appeared to be in his bipartisan deal-making mode...

...Since 1976 it has helped millions of people—the poor, the elderly and the disabled—save up to 30 per cent on their energy bills through structural improvements in their homes...

...They thought the nomination could be opposed on the safe ground of his veracity and the White House's incompetence...

...The Congressional leadership, anxious not to be distracted from its legislative program, had until then managed to persuade the Christian Right to put social questions on hold...

...One ugly note was the implied threat to revive a bitter historic dispute over whether America and Britain had dragged their feet about opening up a second front to aid the beleaguered Soviets...

...The Republicans, always divided on abortion despite their staunch platform plank against it, found themselves with a problem...

...Senator Phil Gramm of Texas jumped very high...

...He said a 10-year-old schoolboy in St...

...Foster was sent out to make a speech declaring, "I believe in a woman's right to choose...

...The only factual basis for that story was a woman who was convicted of fraud for using two false names to collect a total of $8,000...

...Foster had performed led opponents to come out in full cry...

...Deutch's inclusion in the Cabinet will not make him Clinton's Rasputin, nor is it likely to lead to another Iran-contra scandal...

...Specter, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who nurture dreams of naming a Cabinet, too, expressed concern about a possible conflict of interest if the head of the CIA became a Cabinet member...

...There is a nonresidential drug treatment center up the street, run partly with Federal funds, but nothing like the bargain basement homeless shelter that the Speaker talked about...

...Whether to snub President Yeltsin's sacred day marking the defeat of the Nazis, who killed 20 million Soviet citizens, and risk a chill in Russian-American relations, or whether to take arms against a sea of Republicans who would call him a wimp for honoring the butcher of Chechnya, the supplier of a nuclear reactor to Iran...

...When a coalition of moderate Republicans formed in the House to urge capping the proposed family tax cut at an income level of $95,000 rather than $200,000...

...Bunn had an idea where some of that money could be found...

...But the White House remained removed from the fray...

...But now that the Foster nomination had brought abortion to the fore, the truce collapsed...

...Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he was keeping an open mind until the confirmation hearings and didn't want to see Dr...

...Gingrich drew gasps from an audience of restaurant owners when he told them of a Federal shelter for the homeless in Denver that cost 25 times as much to operate as a privately-funded shelter up the street...

...Woolsey had to wait hours for Clinton to keep appointments, until he virtually gave up and dealt with the National Security staff...

...Senator Robert Dole of Kansas jumped, but not very high...

...During the floor debate on welfare reform, they discovered unexpected allies in the Catholic Church and pro-life Republicans, who are concerned that taking away benefits from teenage mothers will encourage abortions...

...Although generally popular with Congress, the weatherization program, like many others, faced a deep rescission cut of $10 million...

...Newport is also proud of its freshman member of Congress, Republican Jim Bunn, who landed a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee...

...Divided on Abortion IN PREPARING to battle for the confirmation of Dr...

...Suddenly, the Clinton Administration, on the defensive almost everywhere else, found itself with a sword thrust deep into the heart of the ascendant Republican Party...

...The Administration thus passed up a chance to denounce a program Speaker Newt Gingrich has called the "crown jewel in the Contract...

...So, if Bunn's scheme survives the Senate-House conference, Newport will get the funds it wants for its spanking new visitors' center and some poor folks' homes won't get insulated...

...Richard M. Nixon, who suspected the CIA of having worked for Kennedy's victory over him in 1960, had cool relations with Richard M. Helms, which turned icy when the agency refused to help in a Watergate coverup...

...In their home districts they had been hearing more vehement talk about school lunches than any other Congressional matter...

...Out in the Cold AMID THE $17 billion blizzard of budget rescissions in the House, one lucky hometown program managed to have almost all its money restored...

...After a lot of conflicting counsel from political and diplomatic advisers, Clinton decided, as Richard Nixon might put it, to do not the popular thing, but the responsible thing and make the trip...

...When Dan Quayle pulled out of the Presidential race, raising the question of where his constituents would go, Reed said bluntly, "Let's see who jumps highest to get that vote...

...Admiral Stansfield Turner, was not allowed by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to see the President alone...

...He repeated the Clinton 1992 campaign slogan that abortions should be "legal, safe and rare...

...It was not until two years and millions of Russian casualties later— at the Quebec Summit in August 1943— that Roosevelt and Churchill instructed General Eisenhower to start detailed planning for the invasion, which was finally launched in June 1944...

...One is about the dry cleaner who was fined for not posting a list of employee injuries, even though his employees didn't have any...

...Louis was put in detention for saying grace in a cafeteria...

...Senators Specter and Lugar can stop worrying...

...The Russians have never forgotten that within months of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin was pressing Churchill and Roosevelt to attack the Germans from the west...

...Let Me Tell You About...

...Casey did not discuss Iran-contra shenanigans at the Cabinet table...

...Signing the unfunded mandates bill, the President spoke of the blessings of bipartisan cooperation and the glories of the roses about to bloom in the Rose Garden, tra-la...

...They noted that the one intelligence chief to date with Cabinet status, William J. Casey, got the Reagan Administration into the Iran-contra scandal...

...Majority Whip Tom DeLay, for example, has a litany of antiregulation anecdotes...

...But the White House was slow to exploit these opportunities, leaving it mainly to Congressional Democrats to wage the front-line battle...

...Some 27 million people are currently eligible...

...as Surgeon General, the Administration may have stumbled on a wedge issue to divide Republicans...

...Or, perhaps he will soon come out swinging in support of the embattled Congressional Democrats—maybe next week, or maybe the week after that...

...Clinton's general approval rating has broken 50 per cent for the first time in a long while...

...In the age of live coverage and sound-bite television, it is a potent weapon often employed by the Gingrich revolutionaries...

...John F. Kennedy soured on Allen W. Dulles after the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco...

...Harry S. Truman, who created the CIA, had a warm relationship with General Walter Bedell Smith, and the two met every Friday morning...

...Jimmy Carter's director...

...Congressman Bunn, riding to the rescue of his home district's project, proposed an additional cut of $4.8 million in weatherization, and he got his Republican colleagues on Appropriations to go along...

...For the President s Eyes Only, shows how this has varied with the President's background and interests...

...A Matter of Personal Relations NEEDING A QUICK substitute for the withdrawn nomination of retired Air Force General Michael P. C. Cams as Director of Central Intelligence, President Clinton promised the reluctant candidate, John M. Deutch, Cabinet rank...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Clinton on the High Road AS THE HUNDRED DAYS of the House Republican Contract With America neared their end, climaxed by passage of a draconian welfare overhaul bill, President Clinton seemed more concerned about the acrimony of the debate than the parsimony of the legislation...

...He had his own office in the White House annex...

...Speaker Gingrich himself has run up an impressive record of making telling points by misstating facts...

...Under the rules, a rescission can be restored only if a compensating cut is made elsewhere...

...There was more pressure in the private communications—suggestions that the Russian military and the nationalists would have a field day with a Clinton rejection...

...House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri denounced the $95,000 cap as a "fig leaf over a package that would starve Main Street to stuff Wall Street...

...It got a little rough last week and a little too personal and partisan," he chided in one of his Saturday radio talks...

...He left it to Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta to mention the possibility of a veto on this and other measures...

...While Gingrich is the unchallenged Congressional champion of argument by anecdote, others of his cohort are no slackers...

...At the time and afterward the Russians voiced the suspicion that Britain and the United States were happy to see the Germans and the Russians bleed each other into exhaustion...

...Doing the Right Thing TO COMMEMORATE the 50th anniversary of the Allies' victory over the Germans in World War II, President Clinton finally decided to accept Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's invitation to Moscow after a long period of vacillation...

...Given President Clinton's primarily domestic orientation, and his not facing a cold or hot war that made intelligence crucial, Admiral R. James Woolsey simply found it difficult to engage his attention...

...In recent polls...

...Perhaps he has concluded that mildness and moderation are the way to the voters' hearts...

...By contrast...

...Foster railroaded...

...Reed announced that it was a litmus test for Republicans: The Christian Right would not back the 1996 GOP ticket unless both nominees stood four-square behind the right to life...

...It is a President's personal relationship with his intelligence chief that is significant...

...That is a non sequitur...

...His malfeasances had little to do with the ordinary workings of government, and everything to do with his influence on President Reagan...

...Chinks began to develop in the Republicans' armor on issues like school lunches and tax cuts...

...Otherwise the Deputy Secretary of Defense would, in effect, be demoted to apost ranking with Under Secretary...

...Then Bill Clinton decided to fight, and to fight on the principle of abortion rights...

...He told of a foot-dragging Food and Drug Administration that has failed so far to license a heart pump...

...TO EXPLAIN his opposition to welfare, Ronald Reagan had a favorite story about the Chicago welfare queen who used 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and four nonexistent dead husbands to collect $150,000 in tax-free cash...

...It turned out that the boy had been put in detention for a totally unrelated disciplinary infraction...

...Republican Presidential aspirants see the abortion issue as something they need like a hole in the head...

...Christopher Andrew, in his book...

...The President was milder than expected in attacking the $17 billion House rescission bill, which would inflict painful cuts on programs near and dear to him...

...Then there's the story about extracted human teeth being classified as toxic waste because of the risk of infection to health workers, leading a dentist to refuse to give a child's baby teeth to the parents...

...They were further lulled by first signs that the President, hedging his support, was about to do one of his famous nomination cave-ins...

...Every week or so we were told to expect the unveiling of the new, no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy Chief Executive, and each time it didn't happen...

...Ralph Reed, president of the Christian Coalition, had just written an article in the Wall Street Journal saying that economic and social conservatives understood each other and would be civil in their disagreement over issues like abortion...

...The Energy Department has a program called Energy Weatheriza-tion Assistance...

...To go or not to go, that was the question...

...His Democratic colleagues, scenting a waning of public support for the GOP agenda, similarly went full tilt against the Republican leadership...

...The use of the anecdote—selective, exaggerated or plain wrong—as a way of simplifying complicated issues is back with a vengeance...

...The Newport visitors' center was slated for a $7.5 million cut...

...The initial confused response of the White House on how many abortions Dr...

...Speaker Newt Gingrich says an internal Republican fight over abortion rights would interfere with efforts for economic and governmental reform...

...The manufacturer, however, has not yet applied for a license...

...Henry W. Foster Jr...

...The pressure from Moscow was fierce—an open offer from Yeltsin to cancel the military part of the Red Square parade, sparing Clinton the pictures with tanks and missiles...

...the White House welcomed the move as a step toward compromise instead of seizing the moment to say that even Republicans could not stomach tax breaks for the rich...