BY ANDREW DeMILLO

Offering a packed auditorium a glimpse into the real "West Wing," four aides to former President Clinton said Tuesday the White House’s often harried schedule can set the tone for a nation. "We used to say in the White House that the president’s time is the most valuable commodity we have," said Stephanie Streett, Clinton’s former scheduler and now executive director of the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation. The president’s schedule, she said, "was designed to reflect the goals and strategies of his administration."

Speaking at the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on Tuesday afternoon, Streett discussed the challenges of scheduling time for the world’s most powerful leader.

Joining Streett were former chief of staff Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, former chief of staff to the first lady Maggie Williams and former deputy White House counsel Bruce Lindsey. They spoke at a seminar organized by the school and the Clinton foundation.

The president’s schedule is a balancing act of domestic priorities, foreign policy issues, messages to the public, and as McLarty put it, handling "incoming fire" each day. "We’d get the paper to see if Clinton was above the fold and how bad it was," McLarty said.

The president’s schedule, McLarty added, also was affected by outside events such as the Oklahoma City bombing and an attempted coup in Russia. "Boris, what in the world is going on over there," McLarty said he recalled Clinton saying to Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the phone late one night during the attempted coup.

But economic concerns remained Clinton’s priority in the early days, McLarty said, with aides and staff members spending late nights in the Roosevelt Room going through the president’s economic plan line by line. "The responsibility never stops," McLarty said. "It’s all over the place."

As high points of Clinton’s two terms in office, aides cited the passage of Clinton’s economic plan and the president’s meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

And for disappointments, the suicide of aide Vince Foster and various investigations of the White House were mentioned.

Lindsey, who helped defend Clinton through Whitewater, the impeachment and other congressional hearings, dryly joked about the panel discussion. "I joked with Mack that normally when we’re on a panel we begin by raising our right hands," Lindsey said, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd of mostly UALR faculty. "My training was in civil law, but over the last eight years, I learned a lot about criminal law," Lindsey said.

Saying no to scores of people demanding the president’s time, "the scheduler was not the most popular person in the White House," Streett said.

On two large television screens, Streett displayed memos outlining the demands on the president’s time. She said she met with the president daily to direct his activities.

In addition to the president’s regular activities, Streett said she would set aside about three hours a day for him to read, write speeches, make phone calls, "and occasionally catch a round of golf."

The White House tried to maintain a message through its activities each week, but it was difficult to stay completely on schedule, Streett said. "It was rare for a day to unfold exactly as planned," she said.

Williams, who now serves as chief of staff for the former president’s Harlem office, said the first lady influenced the presidency through her visits and trips throughout the nation and the world. "[Hillary Rodham Clinton] spent a great deal listening to the American people," Williams said. "She brought back to all of us what she saw on the road."

Tuesday’s seminar was the first in a series that school officials hope to have on the Clinton presidency before the presidential library opens in downtown Little Rock in 2004. The $160 million library will give scholars a unique opportunity to study White House and American history, said UALR political science professor Margaret Scranton. "This is the kind of event that historians dream of," said Scranton, who in January will teach a course on Clinton’s presidency. "The documents can only tell you so much."

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2002