MIX AND MATCH

So what was going through Bill Clinton’s mind last Wednesday afternoon out there on the golf course, where, he has said, “I always do my best thinking”? The President had hemmed and hawed for weeks about who should take charge of the nation’s security for the next four years, and somewhere among the drives, chips and putts on that chill December afternoon, it came to him: the same folks, bar one, who had been deeply involved in charting America’s course for the past four years. Let foreign policy wonks fret over the Grand Strategic Architecture of Post-Cold War Policy; Clinton was pondering personalities, teamwork, chemistry. He wanted known quantities who could ensure a quick and tidy transition; basic compatibility to avoid the turf wars that pulverized the Carter Administration; loyalty over swashbuckling egos; tough, proven negotiating talent and skill at p.r. A Republican to prove bipartisan goodwill. Maybe a promotion for one old friend and a safe haven for another.

And that’s precisely what he got by reshuffling familiar faces. The faithful U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright emerged as the nation’s first ever female Secretary of State, smashing through Washington’s gender ceiling. Retiring Republican Senator William Cohen was asked to head the Pentagon; the President’s old pal Samuel Berger was elevated from No. 2 at the National Security Council (NSC) to No. 1, while loyal but not intimate friend Anthony Lake was switched from that job to the CIA.

But the choices tend to confirm the thing that has bedeviled Clinton’s foreign policy all along: he has yet to define any firm concepts for U.S. global leadership, choosing instead to rely on the ad hoc reactions of the cozy circle of bright, competent but unthreatening advisers who have boosted his performance the past two years. “The biggest thing these appointments tell you about the direction of U.S. foreign policy is that there is no direction,” says Richard Haass, a former Bush adviser now at the Brookings Institution.

Of course, the foreign policy elite has long been clamoring for the vision thing, demanding that the Clinton Administration provide a central framework to organize and guide U.S. national interests through the messy new world order. But that may be too much to ask: none of those on any short list for any of the jobs have a fully developed theory of 21st century policy in their head. Even if they did, that might not be desirable in an era with no single coherent threat and a need instead for smart, flexible, case-by-case solutions.

For that, Clinton’s new team brings a feisty dose of pragmatism. Albright will bring to her job an energy and passion for American activism conspicuously lacking under Warren Christopher’s lawyerly stewardship. While her predecessor’s outlook was shaped by the humiliations of Vietnam, the younger Albright’s world view harks farther back to her personal history as a refugee twice over, from Nazism and from communism. That has endowed her with a cold warrior’s fervent patriotism and a belief that America must take the lead as an international force for good. She was first and loudest in demanding strong action in Bosnia and humanitarian intervention in Rwanda. What is the military for, she famously asked former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, if not to use? But she is also the Administration’s most persistent nudge on human rights all over the globe. Her strength may be that she worries less about words and more about action, that she is a reliable executor of the President’s decisions.

From his years in the Senate, the articulate Cohen–he’s a poet who has composed verse on such themes as nuclear war–is an expert on weapons systems and deployment scenarios, but it remains unclear whether he has done any conceptual thinking about, say, the relationship between military force and diplomatic aims. Friends are worried that the gentlemanly politician who has never run anything bigger than his Senate staff may be too overwhelmed by the managerial responsibilities of the megagigantic Pentagon to engage in much theorizing.

At the NSC, Lake provided what there was of strategic thinking in the first term. But there is no place for that at the CIA. The intelligence director is supposed to provide the raw data, not the finished policy. And there are wildly differing views on whether this secretive, acerbic academic is the right man to revive the fortunes of one of the most byzantine, hidebound and demoralized bureaucracies in Washington. A former spook says Lake lacks the street smarts and swagger to impress the cowboys at Langley. “I’m not sure he has the kind of forceful personality, as a cheerleader and as a taskmaster, to play both those roles,” agrees another ex-official. But others suggest his access to the President and past support for covert actions will help him push the agency through its mid-life crisis.

That leaves Albright with the burden of responsibility for shaping big ideas. Her knack for cutting to the core of an issue will help an Administration prone to dithering until a crisis explodes. She likes to focus on the big points, and starts a lot of sentences in interagency debates with: “The issue here is…” During a Saturday teleconference on Bosnia in 1995, an exasperated Albright interrupted from her New York video screen the abstract seminar under way. “Gentlemen, it’s nice to think about all these things we hope to do or wish we could do,” she snapped. “But you better start figuring out what we’re going to do.”

Her boss loves her for her tart tongue and tough stands: he still keeps the bumper sticker bearing her infamous sneer at Castro for shooting down two American civilian planes last February: THIS IS NOT COJONES; THIS IS COWARDICE. But Albright’s bulldog style is not admired nearly as much abroad. When word of her appointment reached a black-tie U.N. dinner, there was no international equivalent of high fives. Could she, muttered colleagues, gear down her confrontational style enough to succeed in the delicate art of nation-to-nation negotiation? French diplomats, who tangled with her over her aggressive campaign to dump U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, were pointedly ordered to speak of her new appointment only in positive terms.

Still, she has already charmed potential enemies on the domestic front, including the irascible Republican Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who toasted her last week as a “tough and courageous lady.” In fact, such bipartisan appeal was a major factor in the selection of Albright and her teammates. Clinton must co-opt a skeptical Congress if he is ever to develop the national consensus essential to almost any foreign venture or protect the policymaking bureaucracy from the budget hawks. Cohen is highly regarded on both sides of the aisle as a bridge builder who can meld judicious compromises on contentious issues. A sure sign of his appeal is the fact that Republican John Warner praises him for holding the line against cuts while Democrat Sam Nunn lauds him for his fiscal discipline.

At least as important, Cohen and Albright are all more adept at mobilizing public opinion than the first-term team, which failed miserably at it. Christopher liked his diplomacy buttoned down and hushed up. The new team has to do much better at persuading an indifferent, otherwise-engaged American public to support risky adventures abroad. That is a role Albright has long auditioned for from the U.N.; she’ll step in as the CNN Secretary of State that Christopher never wanted to be. She is the master of the sound bite, explaining complex issues in 10-second phrases that lunch-pail Americans can understand. She became famous for searing one-liners against dictators like Saddam Hussein and corrupt Haitian generals. “You can leave voluntarily and soon or involuntarily and soon,” she told the junta.

The real job of the affable Berger is to be Mr. Inside, the daily consensus builder brokering honestly among competing interests from State, Defense, the intelligence community, the NSC staff. He’ll be there to get the job done. This rumpled trade lawyer lacks the intellectual heft of Lake but is a better bureaucratic synthesizer, a noted detail man, and he is well liked by just about everyone in the Administration.

If Berger is the ultimate team player, how well the rest will pull together is hard to tell. For instance, Albright leans toward military action, Lake leans against it, and Cohen insists on consulting Congress first. And Albright makes no bones about her love of the limelight, Cohen is a maverick with a stubborn streak, and Lake is known for sharp elbows.

Yet Clinton, when he first sat down two weeks before the election with Vice President Al Gore, chief of staff Leon Panetta and favored friend Vernon Jordan, insisted it was teamwork he wanted above all. Gore proposed Cohen for Defense, and Albright was an obvious choice for State. Colin Powell, considered at one point for the job, was pressed by the Vice President as a way to neutralize a potential rival in 2000. But the Republican of choice was always Cohen for Defense. Berger got the NSC job in part by default: he was offered the chief-of-staff position when Erskine Bowles at first seemed unwilling to take it, so NSC was the consolation prize. And Lake was rewarded with the CIA after being evicted from the NSC to make room for Berger.

Candidates rose and fell, many in full public glare. Clinton fell hard for George Mitchell when he played Bob Dole in the campaign-debate rehearsals. Despite minimal foreign policy experience, the Democratic Senator was touted as the front runner for days, only to falter when Democrats showed even less enthusiasm for him than Republicans did. Mitchell may also owe his eclipse to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who went to his friend Bill just when the deal seemed done to make a strong pitch for Richard Holbrooke, the ambitious architect of the Dayton accords. Clinton didn’t care that Holbrooke would break a lot of careers and egos over at Foggy Bottom, but he knew that Lake and Holbrooke despised each other and would be constantly sniping. Meanwhile, women’s groups, incensed at a remark leaked by a White House aide relegating Albright to the “second tier,” met twice with Gore to remind him and his boss how much they owed the soccer moms for their re-election. By then Albright was the one candidate to score at least a B on every criterion, piling up the fewest enemies or flaws. Still Clinton hesitated, turning over the mix to see if he had got it just right. As late as midweek, he was asking Senators and friends, “If you had to decide, what would you do?” It wasn’t until 9 p.m. last Wednesday that he summoned Panetta to the family quarters and finally said, “Well, I’ve made up my mind.”

A team is only as good as its leader. What remains unresolved after what aides described as a “tormenting process” is the role Clinton has assigned himself. It is one thing to select a team; it is quite another to give it direction.

–Reported by Bonnie Angelo/New York, J.F.O. McAllister and Douglas Waller/Washington