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At the moment the White House isn't worried so much about Kerrey as it is about House minority leader Richard Gephardt. Less than a month after Gephardt upstaged Clinton with a tax-cut proposal of his own, the Congressman won considerable attention last week for proposing a two-tiered flat tax starting at 11%. That move angered some at the White House, who may not realize that Gephardt was working on tax reform when many of them were still in school.
While the Missouri Congressman is unlikely to run, rumors of a challenge have the White House oddly spooked. Vice President Al Gore opposed the idea of having New Jersey Congressman Bob Torricelli head the Democratic Party because Gore feared, in part, that Torricelli might be a Gephardt mole. Still, Clinton is about to promote an old Gephardt hand: Terry McAuliffe, the D.N.C. finance chairman, will take over as finance director of the Clinton re-election campaign in March. McAuliffe raised most of Gephardt's money in 1988; his promotion alone makes a Gephardt run more difficult.
The White House constellation is shifting in other ways as well. Clinton has made no secret of his displeasure with pollster Stan Greenberg for misjudging the mood on health care, nor of his unhappiness over media adviser Mandy Grunwald's ads that too directly linked the G.O.P. Contract with America to Reaganomics. Consultant James Carville has been absent too long to be suddenly "out of favor," and strategist Paul Begala probably retains the strongest ties to the President from the old Gang of Four. Still, new stars may be rising in their place: Clinton has consulted Gore's favorite pollster, Mark Mellman, consultants David Doak and Bob Shrum and other longtime Democratic hands. All this strengthens Ickes' position inside the White House. So does his direct line to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Though she told nearly a dozen food writers, gossip columnists and even Ann Landers this week that she had been "naive and dumb" about politics last year, she is as influential as ever behind the scenes. Hillary Clinton urged her husband to back the tax-cut proposal in December, seek advice beyond the Gang of Four and turn Ickes loose on presidential politics. "Harold is Hillary," said an Administration official. "And they're finally putting her on the one project that she's best suited for: his re-election."