AS A second term President, William Jefferson Clinton is both "an instant lame duck and a leader with new freedom of action".
This is how one of the shrewdest political commentators, William Safire, sums up the four Clinton years that lie ahead.
Rush Limbaugh, who hosts the country's most popular radio show and is a notorious Clinton basher, has a different slant. "Mr Clinton is not in his second term a lame duck president. He is a sitting duck president."
There is truth in both these judgments. The election failed to give Clinton a clear mandate and exposes him to a renewed assault on Whitewater related scandals and crooked fundraising, but he is also free to act without thinking about the next election.
He also knows the importance of getting off to a vigorous start and avoiding the kind of disastrous appointments which marred the opening months of his first term four years ago.
He lost no time in naming yesterday his new chief of staff North Carolina banker Ernest Bowles, who is a superb administrator and was a deputy chief of staff for a time during the first administration, but who lacks the political experience of the outgoing Leon Panetta.
This time, the new Clinton administration will be on the starting blocks from Inaugural Day next January 20th. The honeymoon for a newly elected president will not last long with a Republican Congress, which will make bipartisan noises at first but has a lot of scores to settle over a dirty election campaign.
Picking his new team wisely is now the president's highest priority. To the annoyance of his wife Hillary, this has meant that the president has delayed the holiday in Hawaii planned as a much needed break before embarking on an Asian tour.
Within hours of the election results, there were vacancies flagged for five cabinet posts as the incumbents signalled their intention to step down. In most cases they were only confirming their predicted departures, but coming all at once the announcements have put pressure on the president to pick his new team fast.
Unlike Ireland, where a phone call is enough to alert a politician, that he is heading for a cabinet post, appointees here have to be screened in detail on their past lives for any incident which could derail their confirmation process in the Senate. Irregularities in the employment of children's help sank two of Clinton's choices for attorney general the last time.
When the new team is safely through FBI cheeks and the Senate hearings, its job will be to help "the president build his famous "bridge to the 21st century". But what does this mean?
Clinton aides are surprised at such a question. If you were listening to him stumping the country for the past two months you would know what it means.
It means balancing the budget by 2002, or two years after Clinton has left office; making third level education affordable for all who need it through tax incentives; ensuring that the reformed welfare system leads to jobs and not destitution, as the federal safety net is withdrawn; and tackling the impending bankruptcy of the Medicaid health scheme and the social security system which provides retirement pensions.
It is an agenda that leaves commentators sighing for the more combative Reagan second term and fierce debates on nuclear arms, Central America and tax policy. William Kristol, editor of the conservative weekly Standard says: "It's all boring and slightly dispiriting. Everything in the 90s is becoming sort of like Jell O."
Old Washington hand David Brinkley, the famous TV anchorman who hosts his last The Week show tomorrow, committed the lese majeste of saying on air on election night that Mr Clinton "has not a creative bone in his body; therefore he's a bore and will always be a bore". Not surprisingly, the interview that Mr Clinton was to give Brinkley for his farewell appearance is on hold.
In the closing days of the Clinton and Dole campaigns, fundraising suddenly flared as a hot issue. The president and the Democrats were embarrassed by a welter of revelations about dubious contributions from foreign sources, including wealthy Indonesian and Taiwanese anxious toe buy influence in the White House. Promises were made that it would all be investigated in a second term.
This election revealed how both parties are running rings around the strict federal limits on campaign contributions set up after Watergate and Nixon's disgrace. The loophole is so called "soft money" which is legal as long as it does not support candidates directly, a condition which has become ever more elastic.
But before the president sets both parties to work together on eliminating abuses in election fundraising, the Republican Congress will want to see him squirm under an investigation into the payments from foreign sources that financed his own campaign and those of the Democrats.
The Republican Congressional leaders, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, have been promising to work constructively with the newly elected president now that he has moved away from a liberal agenda and repositioned himself in what he calls the "vital centre". As Gingrich disarmingly puts it: "We have an obligation, frankly, to reach out to the re elected president, who after all campaigned on a balanced budget and targeted tax cuts and being against drugs and for doing virtually all the things we said we were for."
It is this soft shoe shuffling by Clinton and his Republican opponents that has prompted the Ned York Times comment: "Pessimists looking at the results will conclude that voters have no idea what they really want Gingrich conservatism, Clintonesque post liberalism or just plain gridlock between a Republican Congress and a Democratic White House." The newspaper, uneasy at the prospect of mushy consensus making, goes on to urge Clinton to "set the agenda and force Congress to respond to his legislative initiatives.
But here is where the "sitting duck" theory of his presidency quacks for attention. A formidable list of "Clinton troubles ripe, for Republican attack" was, splashed across several newspapers along with election results.
The improper sexual advances, allegation made by Paula Jones against Mr Clinton may be heard by the Supreme Court in January, possibly distracting from the inaugural celebrations. The court will rule whether her civil action can go ahead or must wait until the president steps down in 2000.
The Whitewater morass has also to be traversed. Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, who has already put several former Clinton, friends behind bars, held off issuing any further indictments until after the election but there are persistent rumours that he is closing in on the First Lady, Hillary Clinton.
Mr Starr is also investigating why the White House improperly, obtained up to 900 FBI files on mainly Republican opponents and the reasons for the dismissal of the White House travel staff in 1993. Other special prosecutors are: winding up investigations into allegations against the Housing Secretary, Henry Cisneros, and former Agriculture Secretary, Mike Espy, and the affairs of former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who died in an air crash last April.
Mr Clinton sees these investigations as politically motivated and has appealed to his Republican opponents to put these "ethical" issues to one side and concentrate on how he and Congress can work in bipartisan fashion on both domestic and foreign policy. To prove his bipartisan credentials, the president is keen to appoint one or more Republicans to high office.
This approach will mean a change of style in the Clinton presidency, as he works to leave a lasting legacy of social progress and a country better educated for what he calls the information age. Some historians say that the bipartisan approach suits Clinton. As one Princeton professor, Fred Greenstein, puts it: "This guy is like a great big lint brush that picks up everything. In his sloppy Big Mac sort of way, he combines a lot of traits we saw in Roosevelt Kennedy and Johnson. He is breathtakingly pragmatic."
On Northern Ireland, the president would love to see a resolution of the conflict during his second term and will give full backing to the efforts of the two governments and the political parties to make a success of the peace process. But if he appoints George Mitchell to a senior cabinet post, he will have lost a valuable "eyes and ears" at the negotiating table.
It has to be admitted that Northern Ireland is an almost invisible issue in US politics. The president's personal interest and the appointment of Mr Mitchell were quite exceptional.
If the president's chief advisers on Northern Ireland, Tony Lake and Nancy Soderberg of the National Security Council, remain for the second term the peace process will continue to get special attention. If they leave the White House, Northern Ireland will still be on the agenda but Irish politicians and diplomats will have to establish new relationships.
If George Mitchell becomes Secretary of State, the State Department will regain some of the influence over Northern Ireland policy it lost to the White House during the past four years.