BRIAN IS USEFUL, INSTINCT IS VITAL FOR BILL CLINTON

His most enthusiastic supporters say Bill Clinton may be another Franklin Roosevelt. We'll see about that. In any event, a battle will now rage for Bill Clinton's mind and soul just as a similar battle raged after FDR was elected 60 years ago.

Roosevelt's men had varying and conflicting agendas. He had monetary and fiscal conservatives like James Warburg and Lewis Douglas (soon to be his Budget Director) who wanted him to be "prudent and sound," sort of a Herbert Hoover with charm. Senator Cordell Hull, FDR's Secretary of State in waiting, thought the whole world depression could be cured with a reduction in trade barriers. Nothing would put the world back to work any faster than the free and open shipment of goods, he felt.

Then there were the market interventionists from Columbia University Raymond Moley and Rexford Tugwell, the original Brain Trusters who believed that government had to act forcefully to end the depression.

Roosevelt himself found something to be said for all points of view. He wasn't an economist. He was an accommodationist. He was a law school graduate with an undistinguished legal career. What Roos~evelt did have most of all more that any other modern president was political instinct. He may not have had the greatest intellect of the 20th century occupants of the Oval Office, but he certainly had the greatest political instinct. It's that instinct that distinguishes the great presidents from all the others.

The decisions that Clinton makes during the transition may well make or break his administration. It won't make an historic difference who is Secretary of Labor or Secretary of Commerce or Secretary of Transportation. It will make all the difference who is the new Economic Czar and who is Chief of Staff (or the functioning equivalent thereof).

George Bush acted unwisely in almost every major domestic personnel decision. He picked his benign long-time personal friend, Nicholas Brady, to be his benign Secretary of the Treasury. He picked a known snitch and disturber, Richard Darman, to be his OMB Director. He selected John Sununu to be his Chief of Staff in gratitude for Sununu's help winning the 1988 New Hampshire primary. Sununu did more than any other single person to wreck the Bush presidency that is until Pat Buchanan came along to plunge the knife into Bush both in the primaries and at the Houston Convention.

The transition from politics to governance is enormous. Talented men and women who can operate a huge political campaign are not necessarily skilled at running an even huger government. Jimmy Carter brought his men from Plains to run a Washington establishment that they all distrusted. They were overwhelmed. Ronald Reagan started out with a three-headed monster operating the day-to-day White House. The folly of that was apparent soon enough and the talented one, Jim Baker, became Chief of Staff and the less talented, Michael Deaver and Ed Meese, were put in charge of operations more befitting their skills.

Bill Clinton sits in Little Rock in a heady atmosphere of euphoria. Out of that atmosphere will emerge the Clinton administration. The transition decisions made in Little Rock in the next month will bless or curse his future days as president.