NEWTON'S LAW: `APPEARANCE PROBLEM' ASIDE, SUNUNU JUST CAN'T TAKE A HINT

John Sununu, the president's chief of staff, is a political shark. Lesser fish who swim in his wake are ever watchful he will turn and chomp them into bits so tiny Mrs. Paul wouldn't even bread them.

Hold that metaphor. (It was a bit heavy-handed to begin with.) Now picture John Sununu, in a position of de facto presidency during previous administrations, with bad skin, nervous giggles and date shakes.

His recent well-publicized punishment was more befitting a mischievous teen than a man with enough clout to call Gorbachev "Mikky."

But discipline is discipline, and if the underlings at the White House can't comport themselves in an acceptable fashion, "Poppy" Bush has no choice but to crack some heads.

Sununu abused his car privileges so Sununu had his keys taken away.

Grounding him seemed a bit redundant.

Didn't you know someone like this in high school? He was the guy who, no matter how much trouble he got into, always managed to find more. Losing privileges proved an unremitting exercise, but this character always seemed to land on his feet.

And you figured at the time this guy would never amount to anything; surprisingly, he never ran out of angles and shows up at the class reunions in the posture of a prosperous being.

You might recall from recent news event that Sununu knows his way around. When filling out a personality profile form, he listed Rand-McNally as his favorite publisher. Sununu wears two pagers, one from the White House and the other from American Express.

Two months ago, Sununu got a bit of bad news about his use of government airplanes: few people liked it. Some of the cooler heads in the administration decided that the public interest was probably not best-served by Sununu visiting his New Hampshire dentist at taxpayer expense.

At a time when many young Americans were embarked on their first overseas trips (seeing the inhospitable Persian Gulf), Sununu was defending his use of military aircraft for ski trips.

Sununu saw the woodshed over this misunderstanding of privilege, was lashed verbally if not physically, and it was generally agreed he was a better man for the mixup; the worst that happened was that a few travel expense forms were amended and he learned something.

Well, let's not get too far ahead of this latter expectation. Apparently he didn't learn as much as "feel-good" Americans had hoped. Sununu has fallen to criticism again this week for using his chauffeur-driven limousine to carry him to an auction of rare stamps in New York City.

Predictably, Sununu defended his trip, saying it was an automobile and not a plane, that he spent a lot of time on the car phone talking shop and that it is in the public good to leave Washington occasionally and sample the rare stamp market in other locales.

President Bush, a paternalistic soul pushed too far, grabbed up the car keys and lamented privately, "Will he ever learn?" To the nation's press, the president said Sununu had presented an "appearance problem," meaning the chief of staff didn't really screw up but it looked like he did. Bush left it to the nation to figure out the difference.

Where public servants are concerned, Americans are tolerant employers. However, they would rather suffer a rogue than a dolt. Sununu's problem is that he's starting to look more like the latter and less like the former. The guy just won't take a hint.

Americans, most of whom don't have limousines at their disposal, don't enjoy ongoing jokes of which they are the butt. And if Sununu's runaway arrogance goes unchecked, that might be just where he finds himself.