Clinton Enjoys Having Catbird Seat

DENVER — When President Clinton headed to Italy for a 1994 summit of seven world leaders, he saw the meeting as a chance to enhance his stature with a group of peers frustrated by his inexperience and repeated failure to exercise U.S. power overseas.

Clinton’s advance team touted his premier initiative as a bold plan to sweep away trade barriers and, they hoped, transform the image of a young president who seemed lost on the world’s political stage.

It backfired. Within minutes, Clinton’s idea was off the table and back in his pocket, killed by a wave of criticism from his skeptical counterparts at the annual Group of 7 meeting of industrialized powers.

Fast forward three years to Denver: A more experienced American president confidently hosts the same gathering of national leaders. But this time his main problem is refraining from gloating. More than at any summit in recent memory, the group agenda has been the White House agenda--and the model economy has been the U.S. economy.

On foreign policy issues ranging from Bosnia-Herzegovina to the future of European security, American ideas and initiatives have shaped events; increasingly, it is Clinton who is nudging America’s allies to be bolder.

*

In Clinton’s first term, “he had little credibility with other leaders, a foreign policy team that wasn’t respected and an economic team with no credibility,” said Bradley Belt, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Today, it’s all changed. . . . His stature is enhanced. There’s no question of that.”

The elite gathering that concludes today provides a template of a president in transition from his days as spurned newcomer to a full-fledged member of the leaders’ fraternity. Although a host of domestic problems continues to dog Clinton and add a painful burden to his second term, the very forum he once seemed most threatened by--global affairs--increasingly looks like his greatest asset.

At dinners and other get-togethers, Clinton has played on the warm relationships he has established with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and others to assert the U.S. view on issues such as disease control, Bosnia, unemployment, red tape and the environment.

Indeed, the official economic statement released Saturday at the Summit of the Eight--so-called with the addition of Yeltsin at the table--was in many ways a de facto endorsement of U.S. policies on growth, employment and economic stability.

“Now America is poised to lead in the 21st century, as we have in the 20th century about to end,” Clinton said in his Saturday radio address.

One sign of the changing times: European put-downs of Clinton and the United States have shifted 180 degrees, with the attacks increasingly focused on U.S. preeminence rather than American decline.

At past summits, foreign officials frequently derided Clinton for missteps in Somalia, where U.S. troops were chased out by a local warlord; the Balkans, where the White House seemed to waffle incessantly; and for a general lack of leadership.

*

A debt-ridden U.S. economy once offered another juicy target for foreign detractors who liked to point out that America’s financial house was flooded with red ink--robbing Washington, they argued, of the standing to tell them what to do.

But statistics that U.S. officials have made widely available in Denver show that America’s budget deficit--contrary to past years--now represents a much smaller share of the national economy than is the case even in Japan and Germany.

At the Denver gathering, some Europeans complained that triumphant U.S. leaders have been too aggressive in imposing their approach on the rest of the world.

“We are not holding a competition for the best model,” Jacques Santer, the president of the European Commission, huffed at one point. “We define our own model.”

To be sure, a president who is embattled at home may always seek refuge in lofty global concerns. And while Clinton’s aides are quick to point to his solid standing in the polls and progress toward balancing the budget as signs of success, ongoing questions about Democratic financial practices and other matters continue to cloud the picture.

He also faces the embarrassing possibility of further litigation in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who recently gained a helpful ruling by the Supreme Court.

By contrast, the summit has been a comfortable forum for Clinton, where he has regaled the other leaders with stories, back slaps and personal attention. As one U.S. official put it, Clinton feels a particular bond with other leaders who have shared the experience of running for election and glad-handing for votes.

During a lunch break Saturday, Clinton entertained his fellow fraternity members with a story about a big rally in Denver’s Civic Center in 1992.

“The president had a great time embellishing that story and talking about it,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said. “I think the size of the crowd that day at least doubled or tripled as the story was being retold.”