Clinton Not Asking, but Panetta’s Advice Flows

SAN FRANCISCO —  When Leon E. Panetta stepped down after nearly three years as White House chief of staff, he figured his garrulous ex-boss would reach out for occasional advice from his former right-hand man.

President Clinton hasn’t called lately, at least not in the two months since the Monica S. Lewinsky matter unfurled.

But that hasn’t stopped Panetta from giving advice.

Stop kidding yourself, he says. Ignore those sky-high poll ratings, Mr. President, and give a full accounting to the American people.

“In the short term, you can stonewall this area and even look like you’re successful doing it,” Panetta said in a lengthy interview Friday, in a hotel suite high above San Francisco. “But ultimately it catches up with you.”

Panetta, of course, offered similar advice--unbidden and unheeded--in the days after stories surfaced linking the president to Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Panetta was widely quoted on the prospect of Clinton resigning, and he forecast all manner of political peril. His counsel was not only ignored but, perhaps worse, proved wrong by Clinton’s soaring rise in the polls.

Clinton has denied having an improper relationship with Lewinsky.

Panetta, while taking Clinton at his word, believes the president still owes an explanation to the American people about his relationship with the former intern. And until he does that, Panetta maintains, the president and White House strategists are deluding themselves to consider the matter closed.

“The administration is a lot like living with El Nino,” said Panetta, who returned to California--after 31 months inside the turbulent White House--following Clinton’s January 1997 inauguration. “There are the storms that come in, and then there are the bright spots that sometimes make you think that it’s all gone away.

“But the reality is it’s not going to be very long before the clouds move in again. This is not an issue that’s going away.”

While acknowledging Clinton’s popularity in the polls, Panetta insisted that the president remains hamstrung by unanswered questions and Congress’ ultimate role weighing the fruits of the myriad investigations being waged by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Now would have been a good time, Panetta said, to pick an election-year fight with the GOP over political priorities like day care, education and health care. But while the president “can speak to these issues,” Panetta said, Clinton “cannot deliberately antagonize the Republicans who may very well control his fate.”

The candor of the president’s former staff chief has won him no friends or favor in the White House, where his comments are seen as either disloyal or a sad lunge for the spotlight.

Panetta, comfortably ensconced as a gentleman walnut farmer and visiting scholar at Cal State Monterey, sloughed off the derision. “The most important thing for me is to be comfortable with myself,” he said, before dissolving into laughter. “And I sure as hell ought to be able to do it now that I live in Carmel Valley.”

Panetta, who briefly weighed a run this year for California governor but ruled it out because of the steep cost--not any White House baggage, he insists--has long treasured his reputation for integrity and being forthright.

In 1970, he quit his job as civil-rights enforcer under President Nixon rather than bow to pressure to lighten up on school desegregation.

In Congress, where he represented the Monterey-Salinas area for 16 years, he was a budget hawk long before it was fashionable. As head of the House Budget Committee for four years, he honed the skill (saying no to colleagues) that served him well as Clinton’s budget director and then point man in negotiations leading to the bipartisan balanced-budget deal.

There seemed no joy, however, in finding fault with his ex-boss, who deserves more from history, Panetta argued, than a catalog of scandal. There were long sighs and long silences as Panetta peered across the bay to the Oakland hills.

Ultimately, Panetta suggested, his blunt assessment is no more faithless than the advice of those still in the White House who consciously choose to “whistle past the graveyard.”

“I view my loyalty to the president and what I’ve said to be one and the same. In other words, the best advice I can give is what I really believe.”