The first three weeks of his presidency must have taught Bill Clinton to appreciate the idiom "from pillar to post." Between them, Clinton's 10-thumbed attempt to scrap the military's gay ban and the attorney general fiasco Parts I and II bespeak a chief executive in over his head.
The last president to begin so badly was William Henry Harrison, who caught a chill at inauguration and died one month later.Fortunately, Clinton appears healthy and so has every opportunity to redeem himself. To do so, however, he must quickly rise above the familiar Democratic habit of interest-group propitiation, the source of his recent woes.
For instance, Clinton enjoys no mandate to secure the right of homosexuals to serve in the armed forces - a peripheral campaign promise to gay-rights groups.
Yet the non-veteran president moved swiftly to accomplish this problematical task, stepping all over the spit shines of the adamantly opposed Joint Chiefs and alienating Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn.
Similarly, red hot to nominate a female attorney general, Clinton operatives failed to detect that Aetna attorney Zoe Baird had knowingly broken the law by hiring illegal immigrants.
When Baird withdrew, Clinton tapped Kimba Wood, an unsung federal judge with little administrative experience.
Amazingly, Judge Wood also had once hired an illegal. Though she herself had committed no infraction, a panicky White House pulled her nomination, too.
Have these fumbles "set the tone" for the future of the Clinton presidency? We hope not. For America's greater goals - restoring economic zest, reforming education, containing voracious tyrants - benefit from able presidential leadership.
Certainly some Clinton policies will deserve to fail. But there is a difference between respectable failure and sliding around like a puppy on waxed linoleum.
In Clinton's case, presidential strength starts with presidential character. He could show some by stiffing the special interests whose placation has led him to such folly.
It's his call. Cancel Amateur Hour now or syndicate it, at the nation's expense, for the next four years.