MIX AND MATCH

So what was going through Bill Clinton's mind last Wednesday afternoon out there on the golf course, where, he has said, "I always do my best thinking"? The President had hemmed and hawed for weeks about who should take charge of the nation's security for the next four years, and somewhere among the drives, chips and putts on that chill December afternoon, it came to him: the same folks, bar one, who had been deeply involved in charting America's course for the past four years. Let foreign policy wonks fret over the Grand Strategic Architecture of Post-Cold War Policy; Clinton was pondering personalities, teamwork, chemistry. He wanted known quantities who could ensure a quick and tidy transition; basic compatibility to avoid the turf wars that pulverized the Carter Administration; loyalty over swashbuckling egos; tough, proven negotiating talent and skill at p.r. A Republican to prove bipartisan goodwill. Maybe a promotion for one old friend and a safe haven for another.

And that's precisely what he got by reshuffling familiar faces. The faithful U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright emerged as the nation's first ever female Secretary of State, smashing through Washington's gender ceiling. Retiring Republican Senator William Cohen was asked to head the Pentagon; the President's old pal Samuel Berger was elevated from No. 2 at the National Security Council (NSC) to No. 1, while loyal but not intimate friend Anthony Lake was switched from that job to the CIA.

But the choices tend to confirm the thing that has bedeviled Clinton's foreign policy all along: he has yet to define any firm concepts for U.S. global leadership, choosing instead to rely on the ad hoc reactions of the cozy circle of bright, competent but unthreatening advisers who have boosted his performance the past two years. "The biggest thing these appointments tell you about the direction of U.S. foreign policy is that there is no direction," says Richard Haass, a former Bush adviser now at the Brookings Institution.

Of course, the foreign policy elite has long been clamoring for the vision thing, demanding that the Clinton Administration provide a central framework to organize and guide U.S. national interests through the messy new world order. But that may be too much to ask: none of those on any short list for any of the jobs have a fully developed theory of 21st century policy in their head. Even if they did, that might not be desirable in an era with no single coherent threat and a need instead for smart, flexible, case-by-case solutions.