Why I'll vote for Bill Clinton - and why I still worry about him.

• Author: Peters, Charles

I will vote for Bill Clinton in November and hope you will too. Here are some questions that helped me decide. Who do you think will do more to protect the environment, Clinton or Dole? Who do you think will do more to help the poor, even though you fear neither will do enough? Who will do more to keep the tobacco companies from addicting another generation of Americans? Who will do more to bring about the racial reconciliation we so desperately need?

Do you believe that Bob Dole, with his irresponsible tax cut proposals, can improve on Bill Clinton's economic record of steady growth combined with deficit reduction? Does anyone really think that Bob Dole would have cared enough about enacting universal health care to put the enormous effort behind it that Bill Clinton did? To be sure, Clinton could have handled it better, but he did care enough to try, and in the process put his presidency at extreme risk.

Clinton himself may have put it most clearly when on the eve of the last election, he asked how many of today's Republican leaders you can imagine saying, "with malice toward none and charity for all." His critics are right in saying that Bill Clinton is not FDR or JFK. But he has a potential for greatness that just isn't there with Bob Dole.

All this seems quite clear to me. I have no doubts about voting for Bill Clinton. But I do have some concerns about him and his administration that continue to bother me. I'll write about these worries at some length because I think Bill Clinton will be re-elected and hope that he'll do something about them in his second term.

First, the people the President (and his powerful wife) appoint and consult. Why did Bill and Hillary Clinton, two graduates of Yale Law School who had devoted much of the 20 years that followed to zealous networking, fail to identify one person who would be a good attorney general? In this and some other cabinet choices, they appear to have been motivated by the idea of affirmative action, which they have only succeeded in giving a black eye. Why was their appraisal of character and talent so deficient that they made so many mistaken appointments, ranging from Hazel O'Leary to Federico ("ValuJet is safe") Pena to Craig Livingstone? Why do they turn to fashionable gurus like Stephen Covey and Jean Houston instead of trusted old friends? Why have Clinton and Gore, with all their emphasis on reinventing government, made no effort to attract talented young people to the civil service? No president since John Kennedy has made a major effort to inspire the best of our youth to go into government. The...