WHEN UNDERSTANDING IS NOT ENOUGH

President Clinton has a wonderful talent of assuring. It is a talent that comes from understanding issues -- not just in broad strokes, but in intricate detail. Name the issue: unemployment, health care, Russia, international trade, crime, welfare, personal responsibility, Bosnia, etc. Mr. Clinton has spoken on all these issues in ways which at times bring nods even from his harshest critics.

"He just doesn't get it," doesn't seem to fit the president. He's engaged, and we know it.

There's only one problem, his assurances work only as long as his judgment is respected. Even understanding the issues, if his decisions are poor, he becomes just a man of good style. The substance of his leadership becomes dangerous.

Two issues that last week came to the forefront of domestic and foreign policy should give us pause in evaluating how sure we should feel about the president's decision-making.

The foreign policy issue is Russia. The domestic: Admiral Bobby Ray Inman.

Less than two weeks ago President Clinton was in Moscow, meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The message our president trumpeted back home was, don't worry, Yeltsin and the reformers are in charge, reform will continue. He even renewed his pledge that NATO would get tough with Bosnian Serbs, and discussions with Yeltsin had promised that Russia would not interfere.

But only days after Air Force One landed in the United States, reformist Russia began to unravel. Yegor Gaidar, the architect of Russia's economic reform, resigned, saying that reformists were not being listened to in the new government. A few days later, the last of the reformists with any power, Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov, was denied access to the Kremlin for a routine meeting of the Security Council. Fyodorov has expressed his intentions to resign. Meanwhile, Russia has warned that NATO should not take action against the Bosnian Serbs, even though the Serbs have re-intensified their barbarism, rather than lessened it, after Clinton's warnings.

All of this has happened, only days after Mr. Clinton was there. Which brings forth the question: How could he have been so wrong, especially when he was assuring us he was so right?

Bobby Ray Inman was the president's choice for Secretary of Defense. When Inman was first announced, a sense of relief seemed to spread across the country. This was the result of a general doubt about the president's national security team. Among Mr. Clinton's greatest mistakes his first year in office were Somalia, Haiti and his administration's management of the military. Admiral Inman was to have been the solution.

But Admiral Inman, perhaps one of the most applauded appointees in recent history, could not handle the pressure. And in one hour last week tainted 30 years of public service in one of the most wacko news conferences in history. This man, who creates conspiracy theories out of whole cloth, was going to be head of the United States military?

Do you feel assured?

Somewhere there is a breakdown. Is it in the president's staff? Is it with the president? Is it being fixed?

The president's first year in office began with appointment troubles. His second year in office begins with appointment troubles. In the middle, there were appointment troubles: Lani Guinier, Joycelyn Elders, Morton Halperin et al. And yet, the same people are still making the appointments. Do mistakes mean anything to this administration?

Or is it enough just to say, Mr. President, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.

That might be enough if we were talking about an icrecream stand. But we're talking about the world's largest economy and its only superpower. Certainly, Mr. Clinton understands all this. But that isn't enough. His actions must soon begin matching the smoothness of his style, or he -- and we -- will really have problems. Case in point: Russia.