*TC WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton is not the first American president to have a bad year, but 1994, with its personal heartache and political defeats, was a 12-month tribulation that sorely tested his natural optimism.
The first month of the year brought the death of Mr. Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley. In the last month, the president watched as Webster L. Hubbell -- his closest friend, golfing buddy and former Justice Department appointee -- pleaded guilty to charges that could land him in federal prison.
In between, Mr. Clinton witnessed the collapse of his health-care legislation, billed by the White House as the defining act of his presidency. He then presided over the worst defeat at the ballot box that the Democratic Party has experienced in 60 years, a midterm election described by victorious Republicans and defeated Democrats alike as a referendum on Mr. Clinton.
And all year, lurking in the shadows, was the Whitewater affair. Sometimes, it merely distracted the president, the first lady and their advisers. At others, it seemed to threaten the very Clinton presidency.
As if all these things weren't enough, the White House itself became the target of several attacks that left the first family shaken and the Secret Service jumpy, causing the president to alter the free-wheeling style that has been his hallmark.
The year was not without successes for Mr. Clinton: The economy, which candidate Clinton had promised to focus on "like a laser," continued to perform solidly. He also achieved victories in foreign policy, including restoring the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti, and steering a sweeping global trade agreement through Congress.
Even so, political scientists and Clintonites alike agree that the // president's string of setbacks made 1994 one for the history books.
"The year Bill Clinton had was utterly without precedent for a modern president -- with the possible exception of Richard Nixon's last year," said Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at the Johns Hopkins University. "This even has the feel of Watergate to it . . . the advisers dropping off, the darkness coming ever closer to the White House."
It is often hard, Mr. Ginsberg says, to determine the precise line between a president's personal setbacks and his political defeats. But with Mr. Clinton, he said, there seems to be no line at all. As the year wound to an end, critics and comics were using the same material.
Comedian Jay Leno, for example, in a gag on why Mr. Clinton would make a good Santa Claus, focused on something that had been a staple of off-color Republican humor for two years:
"He doesn't need much extra padding. He likes to have women sit on his lap. And he enjoys spending the day promising things he'll never deliver."
Outside events often left Mr. Clinton appearing powerless. When administration officials offered to intervene in the baseball strike before the World Series, they were politely told to take a walk.
Difficult years
Certainly, other modern presidents have been the butts of jokes -- and endured tragic or politically difficult years.
Harry S. Truman refused to run in 1952 after a rash of problems, ranging from financial scandals involving White House aides to public dismay over the deadly but inconclusive Korean War -- dubbed "Truman's War" by his critics.
On March 31, 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson stunned a nation fractured by the Vietnam War by announcing that he would not seek re-election. The decision came after the bloody Tet Offensive -- and a primary challenge by Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
In 1980, the Iranian hostage crisis that began late the previous year left Jimmy Carter -- and the rest of America -- feeling as though they, too, were being held hostage.
In late 1986, the Iran-contra scandal put a damper on the Reagan Revolution.
But the vast array of problems encountered in just this one year by Mr. Clinton has astonished even those who labored in the White House in those other chaotic years.
"Johnson's problems -- 90 percent of them, anyway -- stemmed from one thing: Vietnam," recalls George Christian, LBJ's press secretary in 1968. "With Clinton, it's all sorts of things: It's Bosnia. It's the armed forces. It's Whitewater. . . . It's his health care bill. Some people don't like Hillary. It's just every dadgum thing imaginable."
Ellis Woodward, a veteran of the Carter White House, adds: "1979 was bad, but 1994 was clearly far worse. I mean, he not only set himself up to be challenged in his own party, the way Carter did, but he lost the House and the Senate, for goodness sake!"
Through it all, the president kept showing an optimistic face to the world. Aides said he did the same thing inside the White House.
"The president certainly had his personal hurdles, especially his mother's death, and political hurdles as well, including not seeing his health care legislation pass and the losses on Nov. 8," said Ginny Terzano, the deputy White House press secretary. "And he's a person of normal emotions -- he gets down, he gets angry -- but he has this ability to look at the bright side, to learn from things, to just do what he can to fix it. That's what makes
him unique."
A year in a spin
Nevertheless, from the very beginning, 1994 seemed to spin out of the president's control.
On Jan. 5, the White House revealed that the Clintons' personal lawyer had sought a Justice Department subpoena for Whitewater documents. The stated reason was to keep the records confidential, but one unintended result of this disclosure was that it widened the calls for a special prosecutor.
The next day, Mr. Clinton learned that his mother had died in her sleep in Hot Springs, Ark. The president headed home for the funeral of the woman who had raised him and had become the most important influence in his life.
On Jan. 9, he left for Europe on the first of four foreign trips he took in 1994. In his first major role on the world stage, Mr. Clinton displayed a mastery of the intricacies of foreign policy and charmed his European hosts with down-home humor and campaign trail charm.
He also learned that even while traveling abroad, his domestic problems were never too far away. In Kiev, at a joint news conference with the Ukrainian president, Leonid M. Kravchuk, Mr. Clinton found himself fielding questions about a Whitewater special prosecutor.
Upon returning, Mr. Clinton used his State of the Union address to threaten to veto any legislation that "does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away."
It was a show of spine that generated thunderous applause from the Democratic side, but the tide was already turning against the president's complex 1,345-page health care bill.
Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, giving the Republican response, used a chart to illustrate the bureaucracy that he said would be created by the Clinton plan. Pointing to the bottom of the chart, Mr. Dole said: "You and I are waaaay down here, way at the bottom. President Clinton's idea is to put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor."
In March, White House officials acknowledged that they had been briefed by federal banking regulators on Whitewater-related criminal referrals from the Resolution Trust Corp., the S&L; cleanup agency that is supposed to be independent.
The dreaded word "cover-up" was bandied about once again in Washington. Two officials -- Bernard W. Nussbaum, the White House counsel, and Roger C. Altman, deputy Treasury secretary -- were forced out. A dozen top aides hired lawyers for grand jury appearances.
Increasingly, the focus of Whitewater was on the first lady, who, as a partner in the Rose Law Firm, had represented the Clintons' Whitewater partner -- who also owned a savings and loan -- before Arkansas regulators who had been appointed by her husband.
At a March 7 news conference, Mr. Clinton pounded the lectern and said, "If the rest of the people in this country -- if everybody in this country -- had a character as strong as hers, we wouldn't have half the problems we've got today."
But Whitewater wasn't going away. It was getting bigger.
On March 24, at a prime-time news conference, the president revealed that the financial losses the couple had always said they sustained in Whitewater were significantly less than they had claimed.
Five days later, the White House released records showing that Mrs. Clinton had made a profit of $99,537 in less than 10 months from high-risk commodities trading in 1978 and 1979 after investing only $1,000.
Then, on April 12, the Clintons' attorneys said they had discovered that the Clintons had underpaid their taxes in 1980.
'Character issues'
In early May, the president was put on the defensive again. A former Arkansas state employee named Paula Corbin Jones filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr. Clinton had made an unwanted sexual advance toward her three years earlier, when he was governor of Arkansas.
The president denied her accusation, but it became increasingly clear that those "character" issues dating back to his days in Arkansas were taking their toll.
Returning from a European trip to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-Day, he found the Whitewater special prosecutor, Robert B. Fiske Jr., waiting to question him and Mrs. Clinton under oath.
Mr. Clinton spent the summer dealing with three other issues: reorganization of the White House staff, an economic summit in Europe and a fight with congressional Republicans that produced a sweeping anti-crime bill.
The bill that emerged after 14 days of bruising partisan bickering contained provisions that the president called "tough and smart." They included the "three strikes and you're out" sentencing provision for career criminals, an assault weapons ban, billions for prison construction and new police on the streets, and crime-prevention programs, including drug treatment.
When it was done, the president went, as he had in 1993, to Martha's Vineyard for vacation. When he returned, awaiting were Haiti, Saddam Hussein, apparent assassination attempts, midterm elections and, as always, Whitewater.
The crises in Haiti and Iraq were resolved without American loss of life -- and, polls showed, in a way that increased public confidence in Mr. Clinton as commander in chief. The elections were a different story.
Voters' repudiation
Mr. Clinton attacked House Republicans' "Contract with America" -- and the tax cuts that went with it. In the process, he invited a comparison he had long avoided: one between Reaganomics and Clintonomics. The voters chose the former.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 12, the first of three attacks took place against the White House itself -- one by plane and two by gunfire.
In mid-December, Mr. Hubbell admitted to fraud and tax evasion in a plea bargain with the new Whitewater prosecutor, Kenneth W. Starr.
The White House issued a statement expressing sadness for Mr. Hubbell, but emphasizing that the charges did not involve the White House or Whitewater.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans replied that this remained to be seen. In 1995.