CLINTON'S FIRST 100 DAYS IN SUMMARY: "WANTING"

Much will be made on this day about President Clinton's first 100 days in office. It is a false benchmark, to be sure: in what other job are you expected to be most productive in your first three months? However, President Clinton, awaking the ghost of FDR, raised the issue of the 100-day "quick start," and such an executive claim commands examination of his performance. It is, in a word, wanting.

Seldom has an American chief executive done more (and with greater speed) to damage his own efforts ... the adjective that best describes his presidency to date is self-inflicted. No doubt some of this is due to the nature of Bill Clinton's candidacy for the office, promising a little something of everything for everybody and shifting convictions at will. As evidenced by the results of November's election, voters are forgiving of those who waver on the stump. However, when you're the president, you have to come up with the goods.

Bill Clinton unseated George Bush preaching a sermon of economic salvation, a message bought by a sufficient (if not majority) number of the faithful. Yet in his first days in power, the president proceeded not with this task, but instead took up a cause many are indifferent to and many more are opposed to: gays in the military. As a new commander-in-chief with a track record for evading military involvement, this proved a curious priority. And if the president wanted to set a tone for his administration with early decisiveness, he did so, only ineptly.

Part of the reason President Bush was turned down for a second term was abandonment of the "read-my-lips-no-new-taxes" pledge he professed when seeking the job. President Clinton did not even wait until he was sworn in (maybe it should not count against his 100 days) to discard his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. Blistered by this early development, Americans perhaps braced themselves for the broken promises to come, knowing anything was possible in the face of such chutzpah.

And if there was a doubt the honeymoon was over early, it was confirmed last week when the Democratically controlled Senate laid low the president's grandly promoted economic stimulus package. The chief executive and his spin doctors did all in their power to portray Sen. Bob Dole, the minority leader of that chamber, as inflexible and heartless, but they would do well to acknowledge (at least to themselves) why the Kansan bettered them with fewer troops: he was right. Laden with pork and saddled with payback, the stimulus package was aimed only at stimulating Democratic politicians, and, given time to deliberate on the measure, most American knew it.

And the worst is yet to come for the president; the stimulus measure was foretold as the easier of the packages to pass. Coming are battles on the energy tax, health care legislation, and likely other measures that will aggravate a tax-angered citizenry.

In the wake of setbacks, President Clinton has deported himself poorly, forsaking the polished manner that helped him on the campaign trail. On one occasion, the president pointed to children frolicking on the White House lawn during an Easter egg hunt and revealed Republicans were holding these tykes "hostage" as a result of a Senate filibuster. Maybe this was only loose rhetoric, but it's insulting. President Ford could give the new president a lesson about hostages from the merchant ship Mayaquez. President Carter could give him a lesson about hostages in Iran. President Reagan could give him a lesson about hostages in Lebanon. President Clinton, who inherited a presidency relatively free of American entanglements abroad, knows nothing of hostage situations. He should count his blessings instead of trying to make political muscle from hyperbole.

President Clinton has been right about one thing: a presidency should not be measured over the short haul ... that's why the term is four years and not 100 days. Those who bemoaned the Clinton election should find no glee in the comeuppance of his early missteps; we are American and he is our president. Maybe he will keep one campaign promise, to become a new kind of Democrat and cast aside the tax and spend heritage of his political forebears. Over 100 days or 1,000 days, that would be welcome news.