Obstruct art.

###THOMAS GALVIN

Mr. Galvin is a former investigative reporter for the New York Daily News.

Obstruction works. What other lesson could I draw after four years of covering President Clinton's scandal management? Clinton and his band of spinners have proved that you can stonewall all of the people all of the time.

The typical Clinton scandal runs like this: Sensational allegation, signs of a cover-up, pledges of cooperation, hysterical Republican reaction, savvy White House response, public disgust at the spectacle, a rise in Clinton's approval ratings, talk shows over-analyzing what it all means. The new China missile scandal is already fitting the pattern.

Sitting on President Clinton's train as it rumbled toward the Democratic Con- vention in July 1996, White House political guru Doug Sosnik couldn't have given a hoot about Whitewater or Paula Jones. After all, Americans didn't care. "If Richard Nixon were President today, he'd never be impeached," Sosnik smugly opined.

Nixon would certainly have benefitted from such ruthless -- and effective -- scandal management:

* When allegations of womanizing nearly sunk Clinton in 1992, he hired gumshoe Jack Palladino to shut up the allegers. It doesn't matter now that some of them (e.g., Gennifer Flowers) were telling the truth.

* White House aides smeared Billy Dale in order to deflect blame for the Travelgate mess. Who cares if it meant he faced an unwarranted criminal trial?

* Aides lied about what Clinton knew about a federal investigation of Whitewater in October 1993. That gave the President some breathing room.

* Lawyer Bob Bennett was directed to delay the Jones lawsuit until after Clinton was re-elected.

* Two weeks before the 1996 election Al Gore solemnly told a national TV audience there was no truth to allegations of sleazy fundraising.

Delay. Obfuscate. Obstruct. Attack. Lie. Win.

In the latest example, Clinton will string out the Lewinsky investigation until the fall, then claim that Ken Starr is pursuing the charges to help Republicans keep control of Congress. The fight over Clinton aides' testimony will be dragged out for as long as possible. Then, after the elections, White House toadies (yes, Sid Blumenthal, that's you) will whisper that impeachment proceedings are silly at this point because Clinton will soon be out of office.

And the smart people who work at the White House will simply outplay the Republicans at this game.

In fact, GOP blundering is one of the reasons for Clinton's great escapes. Here's an example: When the White House admitted it had collected FBI files on hundreds of Republicans, there were the makings of a big story. But instead of holding back, doing its own investigation, and letting the story develop, Orrin Hatch's Senate committee immediately held hearings, letting all the air out of the scandal balloon.

White House aides were also just better than most GOP investigators. Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, who had the job of keeping Whitewater from boiling over before the 1996 election, were smarter, more capable, and more credible than most of the Republicans on Clinton's tail.

Bob Giuffra was Al D'Amato's Whitewater counsel, and a smarmier guy you'll never meet. Mike Madigan, who led the Senate campaign-finance investigation, quickly alienated reporters with his cutesy way of implying wrongdoing without having the guts to declare it. If it came to trusting the word of Fabiani versus Giuffra, or White House aide Adam Goldberg versus Madigan, it was a no-brainer for reporters.

As a result, the White House aides' job just wasn't tough -- and when it was they made the right decision. When Hillary Clinton's subpoenaed billing reco- rds from the Rose law firm suddenly popped up in the Clintons' private quarters, there was real panic. Some White House aides were stunned by Fabiani's advice: Do nothing.

There was talk of resignations (maybe even Leon Panetta's), but Fabiani won the day. This wound up being a turning point. The White House took its licks, but the public never started clamoring for a lynching, and the crisis sub- sided. The message was clear: The White House didn't have to try to explain everything.

About a year ago, Clinton aides gave the press the stiff arm when it sought the record of Webster Hubbell's entries into the White House. Why? It turned out there was a heck of a story there about Clinton friends' efforts to get Hubbell work while he was undergoing questioning by Ken Starr before his first indictment.

Clinton aides also have a ruthless willingness to destroy enemies, real or imagined. When David Watkins's "Hillary Did It" memo surfaced, pinning the Travel Office firings on the First Lady, White House staffers were prepared to come forward with new sexual-harassment allegations against Watkins as a pre-emptive strike. It was only when they realized Watkins wasn't going nuclear that they backed off.

Despite the ruthless tactics, ask your typical White House aide whether he believes Paula Jones, or Monica Lewinsky's story on the Linda Tripp tapes, or Kathleen Willey, and well, the voice trails off . . . and then the subject is quickly changed.

The White House m.o. means Clinton goes through lawyers like air fresheners. They can only stick around so long before they start to stink. Bernie Nussbaum, Lloyd Cutler, Abner Mikva, Jack Quinn, and Charles Ruff -- that's five counsels in just six years. And that doesn't include the damage-control lawyers like Fabiani, Lanny Davis, Jane Sherburne, and Lanny Breuer brought in just to handle Clinton's ethical messes.

The press plays right into the Administration's hands. Reporters now cover the White House like a football game. It doesn't matter if Mike McCurry won't ans- wer basic questions. The press just writes about how well he ducks.

So the White House gets away with spin that is comical. Lanny Davis would deny on the record that White House coffees were fundraisers, then go off the record and lament that the White House would use them to raise money.

Carolyn Huber's explanation for how she misplaced the billing records is hilarious. She said she found them in August 1995 and they were so inconsequential that she plopped them into a box without a second thought. Six months later she realized they had been subpoenaed two years before.

But if the records were so inconsequential, how does she remember packing them in the first place? And if she can remember packing them, how come she didn't know that they had been subpoenaed by Ken Starr?

Clinton once promised to answer fully all the questions surrounding the Lewinsky scandal "sooner rather than later." Then his pollsters told him he didn't have to and his lawyers told him they didn't want him to, and he went into stonewall mode once again.

At a recent press conference, my ex - Daily News colleague Kathy Kiely asked Clinton whether he was prepared to have allegations hang over him for the rest of his Presidency. "Absolutely," he responded. And why not? It's only the country that suffers.