Et tu, Bill Clinton? One wonders why any self-respecting president would risk his good name on a second term. In this case, one doesn’t wonder too hard. Clinton lives to overcome long odds. And there’s just no way a man so emotionally ravenous would spurn the narcotic prospect of a Sally Field Re-election Night Wallow: You love me! You really do love me! Anyway: ““There’s always the possibility Clinton experienced his great cataclysm in the first term,’’ Skowronek says, ““and that his best moments as president are yet to come. Theoretically, the first two years of a second term could be a productive time. The president should know by then how to get things done, and he isn’t a total lame duck yet. It just hasn’t happened very often.''

The belief that Clinton, soaring now against the hapless Dole, will be liberated to Do Great Things in his second term has overwhelmed the Democratic Party and is rife in the White House. There is the giddy sense that having resurrected himself, the president is on the cusp of political immortality. A top White House aide recently referred to the boss as ““our spiritual leader.’’ Seriously. Second-term fantasies abound. Liberals believe that when he no longer has to feign moderation, Clinton will emerge from the electoral cocoon as a glorious, old-fashioned Hillary Rodham Progressive. But what does that mean in these straitened times? A revivified Rodham-Magaziner health plan? Marian Wright Edelman (of the Children’s Defense Fund) installed as Secretary of Righteousness?

The interesting thing about the stated liberal second-term fantasy agenda is its modesty. It might even be argued that the Gingrich Republicans have won the day: congressional Democratic sources say it’s likely that a seven-year balanced budget plan will be part of the alternative Gephardt-Daschle ““Contract With America’’ to be announced in June. ““I’d like to see us do welfare reform in a second term,’’ says Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, who would chair the Appropriations Committee if the Democrats retook the House. ““I mean real welfare reform,’’ he adds, ““with more money for day care and training.’’ Obey would also add some money for education, cut middle-class taxes and raise rates for those making more than $200,000 per year. This sounds, superficially at least, like the moderate Democratic Leadership Council agenda that provoked wails and hoots from paleolibs four years ago. The fact is, the left has been so busy defending the bureaucratic status quo it hasn’t had time to think grand new thoughts. And the party’s lifestyle wing, where the real ferocity resides (as it does with the GOP’s religious analog), is more interested in liberties than in programs.

There is another fantasy. Moderates are convinced a reissued Clinton will be free to become the paradigm-busting New Democrat he’s always claimed to be. Certainly, there are paradigms to be busted. ““I hope he’d start thinking about his legacy and really move to reform entitlements like social security and Medicare,’’ says Al From of the DLC. Another possibility is that Clinton will push a radical restructuring of social services for the poor, maintaining the current level of federal spending, but moving responsibility from government bureaucrats to local charities. Or perhaps, aides suggest, the president will lead a national school-reform crusade. Or . . .

There is a third possibility: what you see is what you get. Maybe Bill Clinton won’t be at all ““liberated’’ by re-election, maybe the need to please – as many of the people, as often as possible – is so deeply embedded that he won’t even perceive the attractions of a hell-raising last crusade to secure his place in history. ““That’s the fascinating question,’’ says an aide, ““whether he’d be able – whether he’d want – to transcend who he’s always been.’’ In a recent paper, Stephen Skowronek describes Bill Clinton as a classic ““third way’’ president: one who appropriates the agenda of a successful opposition party, and smooths the rough edges. Such presidents – Cleveland, Wilson and Nixon were others – are usually unloved; they are considered traitors by their own party, and unprincipled by the other side. But they are usually re-elected. Clinton has been a much more confident president these past 18 months, moderating the excesses of Republican balanced-budget and ““values’’ themes, transforming (often uncomfortable) substance into (always palliative) slogans. The real Bill Clinton? Forget the second-term fantasies. You’re watching him now.