Clinton Charts Future With Cabinet Brainstorming Session Marked By Pragmatic Approach To Issues

Four years ago when President Clinton wanted to brainstorm with his new Cabinet, he called the officials to Camp David, the presidential retreat where professional “facilitators” led them through an evening group exercise in sharing confidences about major life experiences.

But Saturday when Clinton held his retreat for the incoming and departing Cabinets, New Age human relations exercises were out and pragmatism was in. The group gathered at the more prosaic Blair House across from the White House. And the only one facilitating was Clinton.

“The president’s pretty good at that himself,” said White House press secretary Mike McCurry.

Most of Clinton’s new Cabinet nominees and White House aides have already served in the administration, although the group now includes a prominent Republican, William Cohen, the former senator from Maine who is the nominee for defense secretary.

Clinton’s aides described the day-long meeting as a set of discussion sessions intended to provoke thought about the challenges facing the administration, particularly in the crucial next few months, in which the president has an opportunity to set the tone for his second term.

“I wish I had some news to make just to compensate for your cold,” the president called to a cluster of shivering reporters as, without an overcoat, he gingerly crossed Pennsylvania Avenue to Blair House.

“Maybe I’ll fall on the ice,” he chuckled. An overnight snowfall and bitter temperatures left a frozen glaze on capital streets.

The inaugural festivities begin next weekend and will be followed in February by his State of the Union address to Congress and his budget proposal for the 1998 fiscal year.

The morning began with sessions on national security and the “new economic architecture of the post-cold-war era,” White House officials said. The Cabinet officials and senior White House aides next moved on to a working lunch with Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

Hillary Rodham Clinton also sat in on the discussions, and Tipper Gore, the vice president’s wife, joined them for lunch.

The afternoon schedule included sessions on budget priorities and ways to promote rising incomes, better education, preservation of the environment and technology.

Clinton considers education “arguably the single most important thing he’ll work on” in the next four years, McCurry said.

All of those issues were raised by Clinton in the presidential campaign, in which he embraced the Republican precept of balancing the budget in seven years while still providing some tax relief. Yet he also provided Democratic grace notes through an emphasis on issues like education and the environment.

With his second term set to begin when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20, Clinton has recently held a series of White House events to highlight his campaign call for a $1,500 tuition tax credit to many families for the first two years of higher education and his pleas for corporations and churches to hire welfare recipients.

Saturday’s Cabinet retreat was originally supposed to take place at Camp David and span the weekend, but the session was shortened so the president and staff members could watch the National Football League playoffs today.

The NFC title game pits the Green Bay Packers against the Carolina Panthers. Clinton’s incoming chief of staff Erskine Bowles was a limited partner in the exploratory group that brought the Panthers to North Carolina.