OUT OF THE FUNK, INTO THE FIRE

There he goes again. Just when White House aides were recovering from President Clinton's recent off-the-cuff remarks that he'd raised taxes too much and that the nation was in a "funk," the President has confounded Democrats once more by confiding his self-doubts to a conservative pundit. During his hour-long phone call Wednesday with Ben Wattenberg, according to The New York Times, Clinton said he was dissatified with his own welfare reform proposal and distressed that he had wandered from a moderate democratic philosophy. "This is Bill Clinton once again thinking out loud about his conclusion that the first two years of his presidency have been far from successful," says White House correspondent James Carney. "He has a compulsion to analyze his situation in public, and today the White House is once again in turmoil."