Semper Phooey!

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WHEN RETIRED ADMIRAL WILliam Crowe arrived at the Oval Office last Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. for a private meeting with Bill Clinton, he found the President eager to talk. For the next hour and 15 minutes, the two men focused almost exclusively on a single, critical issue: how to change the damaging perception that the nation's Commander in Chief is at odds with his military. According to a White House insider, Crowe offered a two-pronged strategy for handling the balky Pentagon brass and disrespectful rank and file: woo them with charm, but keep them in line with a firm hand. More precisely, Clinton was told, Defense Secretary Les Aspin "has to get tough and make them salute."

The meeting was a tacit admission that Clinton's formidable ability to win friends and influence people has fallen flat with the military. Since late January, when Clinton announced his interim policy for lifting the military's ban on homosexuals, matters have been difficult. Mid-level officers and enlisted personnel fume about the Clinton Administration's proposed diet of pay freezes and troop reductions. The top brass grumbles about a lack of respect, noting that no generals or admirals sit on the National Security Council and only two of 45 political positions at the Pentagon have been confirmed. "There's an enormous cultural gap between Clinton and this military," says James Doyle, editorial director of the Army Times.

For a military keenly anxious about its shrinking role in the post-cold war era, every presidential gesture is dissected and analyzed, sometimes absurdly so. It grates that Clinton has spent only one weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat run by the Navy. Military officers charge that Clinton has fewer veterans on his staff than any President in memory. Then there are the rumored slights, both real and imagined: a woman believed to be a member of the White House staff refused to speak to a top aide of Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell (true); Chelsea Clinton refused a military escort (false); Clinton does not intend to use Bethesda Naval Hospital (he has not yet made clear where he will seek medical care). "It's not any one thing that makes us distrust Clinton. It's the accumulation," says a Navy officer. "At a certain point, every little thing starts to be viewed as part of the pattern."

As a result, Clinton has launched a campaign to battle the widespread perception that his White House disdains people in uniform. The first line of offense is to smooth relations with the top brass, whose cues set the tone in the ranks. Aides to both Clinton and Powell are working overtime to put out the word that the two men have moved beyond their early differences over the gay issue and now confer several times a week. White House chief of staff Thomas McLarty describes the Clinton-Powell relationship as "very respectful and professional but not in a stuffy way. In a warm way." It helps that Powell, who had threatened to retire early, has agreed to finish his term, which ends Sept. 30. Clinton aides stress that other high-level bonds have been forged. "I spend more time with ((Powell deputy)) Admiral David Jeremiah than I do with my wife," says a senior Administration official.