THE WHITE HOUSE ADRIFT

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The scariest part about working for Bill Clinton used to be his "purple rages"--violent bursts of room-shaking anger that could drain the blood from the face of even the most confident aide. Back then, Clinton's emotional engagement in his presidency could be measured by the intensity of his hair-trigger temper.

Which is why his response to the latest White House blunder says so much about Bill Clinton's presidency now. Four years ago, a staff member would rather have resigned than be the one to tell the boss about the ill-timed release of the videotapes made of Clinton's coffees with big-money donors. Yet when deputy White House counsel Cheryl Mills brought him the news, first disclosed by TIME, Clinton responded in private much as he did last week in public: with frustration, but also with fatalistic detachment. "He doesn't do the big temper tantrum as much as he used to," says a senior White House official. "The undisciplined Bill Clinton of the past would be obsessed with this videotape business. Now he doesn't let things like that preoccupy him."

That might be a relief if it also didn't reflect something more troubling: a White House without energy and a sense of purpose. Clinton's 1997 has been slow off the ground. His initiatives on race and volunteerism have fizzled from lack of follow-up. His push to improve public education has lacked ambition: Administration officials admit they made standardized tests the centerpiece of their plan not because anyone thinks they are the most vital improvement but because they are the least expensive. And the President's current efforts to bolster his trade-negotiating authority may have come too late to save the legislation. Even the balanced-budget deal was more an item off the President's 1995 and 1996 checklists than a postelection new idea. Yet since midsummer, White House aides have been saying not to expect a new agenda from Clinton until his next State of the Union address in January. "We're still not sure what a post-balanced-budget world looks like," laments one.

For a President fast closing in on lameduck status, six months is a long time to spend on forging a legacy. But Clinton's mind is elsewhere. He no longer sits in on lengthy policy bull sessions with his advisers, and he has stopped reading about new developments in the various investigations and lawsuits that nip at his Administration, preferring the occasional briefing instead. Since recovering from his knee injury, he has taken to playing golf not just on weekends, but on workday afternoons. White House press secretary Mike McCurry praises the President's newfound balance between work and leisure, and insists Clinton's hours on the fairways provide important "think time." Says another top adviser: "No one can ever accuse this President of keeping Ronald Reagan hours."