WHITE HOUSE . . . OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE OLD

President Clinton named Judge Abner Mikva to succeed Lloyd Cutler as White House counsel, a move that brings to an end the 76-year-old Cutler's short-term political rescue mission. The 68-year-old Mikva, the liberal chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is swapping his lifetime post for the less stable job of steering Clinton through the Whitewater scandal.