It doesn't hurt to hope: Clinton is good at comebacks.

The nation still basks in the glow of a perfect Inauguration Day, made almost magical by blue sky and bright January sun. As the old saying goes, it did not rain on President Clinton's parade. But the very next day, the skys darkened, cold rain poured, and the weather was reflected in the storm surrounding his unfortunate choice for attorney general. Even before the symbolic trip from Monticello to Washington, before the ringing of the bells and the fire-works, before the reunion on the Mall, the gala and the concerts, before the inaugural ceremony and the balls--before all that, William Jefferson Clinton was confronted with challenge and horror abroad and with hard realities at home compelling him to recant on glowing campaign promises.

I cannot remember an incoming president so criticized and analyzed before taking the oath of office. And in the press, the raising of doubts continues. Is he hypocritical, as those claim who point to the stringent code of ethics he insisted his appointees must agree to and some of the people actually appointed? (Ron Brown, confirmed for secretary of commerce, seems unable to separate himself from his former corporate clients, only reluctantly responding to pressure to give up representing some of them while in office. And Zoe Baird knowingly broke the law she was to administer--a fact known to Clinton at the time her name was sent up.)

Is he heartless and dissembling, as those say who point to his decision to continue the Bush practice of having the Coast Guard return fleeing Haitian boat people to the country they seek to escape? Is the same decision evidence of perhaps less-than-conscious racism?

Is he a creature of the media giving only lip service to the normal processes of government as those believe who point to his close relationship to Hollywood and television figures? (His inaugural was planned and orchestrated by close friend and producer Harry Thomason and sold to four networks for semi-exclusive use. The press aide for the inaugural bus trip was not, as on other trips, a young staffer but Peter Gruber, chairman of Sony Pictures, Inc.)

Is he psychologically unfit to take over the nation's problems and deal with them? Critic Jonathan Yardley refers to his "perhaps pathological" tardiness which staffers only half-jokingly call operating on CST, "Clinton Standard Time." (He kept the Bushes waiting twenty-five minutes before joining them for the inaugural ceremony.) Does it show an innate disregard for those he is scheduled to meet or join?

Is he a micromanager apt to bog down in detail? Even after inauguration day, the transition teams who were supposed to make it possible "to hit the ground running" were nowhere near filling the crucial subcabinet posts in which policy is determined. Old Washington hands agree that if you want to influence legislation you want to get in at the subcabinet level where the process begins. The winnowing of names for these appointments was made by the centralized personnel office in Washington--then lists of five to ten names were sent to Little Rock. There the president-elect became personally involved, thus slowing down the final decisions because he also had to attend to foreign policy issues and events like his meeting with the Mexican president. Is he, observers ask, too "hands-on," too unwilling to delegate? As I write, "holdovers" from the Bush administration are keeping agencies going.

Is he also content with understanding the multi-facets of a national problem rather than dealing decisively to solve it? Financial writers cite his impressive performance at the economic "summit." Clinton was the master of statistic and theory, they say, but where are the decisions on budget, on "pump-priming," on welfare, on health care? His cabinet appointees, quizzed by the Senate, did not seem to know.

While the speculations about the president's ability to govern continue, pessimistic predictions about the environment in which he must try to govern abound. He, who had hoped to concentrate first on the domestic side of his responsibilities, finds problems abroad taking precedence. According to his predecessor from his own party, former President Jimmy Carter, Clinton is "inheriting the biggest bag of headaches of any president since Truman" (New York Times, January 14, 1993). Carter thinks President George Bush left so many international commitments to Clinton that he could find himself entrapped in quicksand.

Columnist Robert J. Samuelson spells out the complexity of the world Clinton faces: "Governments aren't collapsing but they are having more trouble governing. The continuing disorder of the post-cold war world is a reflection of this....Too much domestic strife feeds global strife, old borders disintegrate. As governments weaken, they try to shore up support by blaming problems on outsiders. It's harder to cooperate on common interests .... What used to be called the 'Western Alliance' of the United States, Europe, and Japan is rapidly fraying" (Washington Post, January 7, 1993).

Descriptions of the domestic environment are equally dismaying. Professor Paul Light of the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, in commenting on Clinton' s transition, said that we've reached a stage in the layering of government bureaucracy that no transition can succeed. Clinton, he estimated, had to fill vacancies in fifteen layers of government, nine more then there were in Kennedy's day.

Most pessimistic of all, senior statesman George Kennan, author of the cold-war containment policy, has just published a book, Around the Cragged Hill (W.W. Norton), in which he says that no president elected in our current election process can make long-range change, that the country has grown too populous to be governable, that the diversity fueled by recent immigration and recurrent racism defies any real unity.

Despite all this, polls and interviews show that the people are hopeful. I, among them, am hopeful. We have, I believe, a complex man for our complex problems. He has made, and will make, mistakes. But one cannot listen to President Clinton, or watch him with people, without being buoyed by his faith and sincerity of purpose. Every one of the negatives about him listed above implies a positive. Is it hypocritical to adjust to reality? Cannot the man who three times during his campaign came from behind with the help of television be the master of the medium as well as its creature? Is he not the same man who has laid the foundation for institutional change by his outreach to Congress? And so on. To paraphrase the song, let us give hope a chance.