Winners & Losers

Clinton II, the sequel, plays the Capitol

Winners

Hillary Clinton Makes Liddy Dole-like tour of Arkansas and then nixes all White House fund raisers

Dick Gephardt Shuts down Clinton on both CPI and a budget compromise. 2000, here we come

The President Knee injury conveniently gives the Big Guy something else to talk about

& Losers

Al Gore China trip still on for next week. No way to avoid more pics with Asian businessmen

Erskine Bowles Chief of staff needs emergency media coaching; not yet ready for Sunday morning

Trent Lott Mr. Neat gets rolled by Dems, who manage to broaden Senate probe of campaign finance

The Putt Stops Here

Bill Clinton's unhappy fall last week at the home of golf pro Greg Norman will earn the President his own place in the history of First Duffers. When it comes to presidential golf, it has often been the spectators (fore!) who were wounded, not the Chief Hackers. (See Clinton's 1995 outing with George Bush and Gerald Ford, when three people were hit by errant shots from the two ex-Presidents.) But Clinton is hardly the first President to come to grief over golf.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT His Rotundity wasn't fit enough for tennis, so he became the first President to hit the links seriously. Unfortunately, Taft was besieged by critics who lambasted him for playing a rich man's sport (and he failed to drop any pounds to boot).

HARRY TRUMAN The un-golfer. Even though he didn't play the game, golf was a headache for Harry. To an accuser, he once asserted, "I never played golf in my life...so I couldn't possibly have fired a ball on the Independence [Missouri] golf course and hit anybody on the head."

RICHARD NIXON Nixon struggled to get his handicap down to 14, but he was never a fanatic about the rules. Sam Snead recalled once playing with the President when Nixon's ball flew into a thicket. Moments later, Snead saw the ball arc onto the fairway. "I knew he threw it out," wrote Snead, but "what could I say?"

GERALD FORD Ford may have had more advisers for his golf game than he did for the Middle East: Jack Nicklaus guided his swing, Hale Irwin helped him with irons, and Dave Stockton nursed his putting. But his golfing only seemed to reinforce his image as a big (clumsy) man carrying a little stick.

Sources: White House Sportsmen; Slammin' Sam; Golf magazine.

Where Are They Now?

MAURICE STANS, 89; PASADENA, CALIFORNIA; Republican fund raiser

When it comes to raising money for presidential elections, you could say Maurice Stans wrote the book. As finance chairman of Richard Nixon's successful re-election in 1972, he reeled in an unprecedented $61 million. An accountant by training, Stans had been budget director under Dwight Eisenhower and later began fund raising for Nixon, ultimately becoming Nixon's first Secretary of Commerce. To this day Stans steadfastly maintains he was not involved in any Watergate wrongdoing. In 1975 he did plead guilty to five misdemeanor violations of campaign laws, paying a $5,000 fine. (A year earlier he was acquitted of conspiring to stifle an SEC probe of financier Robert Vesco.) Watergate did not dim his loyalty or his powers: he raised $30 million for the Nixon library. Stans deems some of the current D.N.C. contributions "improper, illegal and purposely dishonest." Though he is "very much in favor" of the Senate's upcoming investigation, the now retired business consultant and philanthropist is decidedly pessimistic about reform.

Verbatim

"I think he's a real man's man. I think he wears his heart on his sleeve. He likes to sit down and just have a good chat."