A LITTLE FREE ADVICE

JAMES BRADY Former Reagan press secretary

Stick to your principles. Voters expect their President to do what is right. You can make wrong decisions as long as they are for the right reasons. And keep listening to the voters. Even a big mandate is only good as long as it lasts, and mandates don't usually last long--generally two months. OLIVIA GOLDSMITH Author, The First Wives Club

Go back and do something for the kids you left foodless with the welfare bill. Don't be a deadbeat dad to the whole country.

BILL PULLMAN Played the President in Independence Day

He can encourage people to become more active in local affairs, to take more responsibility as citizens rather than waiting for government to help them out. It's an institutional change that can affect everything from welfare to education; we need to empower people on the grass-roots level.

ELIJAH ANDERSON Sociologist, University of Pennsylvania

You must alleviate the hard edge of the welfare bill with a serious commitment to a jobs program on the order of the WPA for the inner-city poor and disadvantaged. If you don't do this, we will have further chaos in the inner city that will be visited not just on people living there but on suburban neighborhoods as well. You'll see more robbery, more crime, more polarization. Most policymakers don't realize how desperate the situation is.

MARTIN E. MARTY Religious historian, University of Chicago

We have seen him in action quoting and using Scripture. Let him concentrate on a chapter or two--Isaiah 58 would do--and get "Bible believers" to talk not about trivia such as school-prayer amendments and the creche on the courthouse lawn. The prophets teach us to put our religious energies into the homeless, our relatives in need and the poor in general.

RICHARD M. DALEY Mayor of Chicago

Maintain your commitment to reinvent government. Local governments have to be innovative to balance their budgets. The Federal Government must do the same. Don't lose sight of what helped you be successful in the first four years--creating partnerships with mayors and county officials. We're closest to the people.

ROBERT SHAPIRO Former O.J. Simpson attorney

I would like to see him reinvoke the Peace Corps, but call it Peace Corps 21--a new Peace Corps determined to create peace in America in the 21st century. Because unless we give people a real alternative to gang life and gang society, we're all going to crumble under the weight of crime.

AL DUNLAP Chairman and CEO, Sunbeam Corp.

Reduce the cost and size of government. Get away from the rhetoric and put in a legitimate balanced budget. Reduce superfluous regulations that kill small-business owners. We have to quit attacking the free-enterprise system.

DON IMUS Radio talk-show host

I'd read him his Miranda rights.

DEBORAH TANNEN Linguist and author, You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation

Don't jump on the bandwagon of antigovernment rhetoric. The result of the election shows that people do want the government to protect their basic rights and provide services.

TOM MORELLO Rock guitarist, Rage Against the Machine

A real leader might begin by ending this disingenuous crusade to censor music and the arts. Inadequate education, poor health services, grim housing, scant job opportunities and brutal, racist cops are the cause of urban violence and decay, not rap lyrics. Stop using the arts as a scapegoat.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN Historian

Use the presidency to empower progressive social movements. The organizing drive of labor's [John] Sweeney is vital as the voice of the worker. Civil rights leaders like [Kweisi] Mfume at the N.A.A.C.P. deserve Clinton's help to focus on the problems of the inner cities and the permanent underclass. Young people should be empowered by the President to get into public service, teaching and combatting poverty and discrimination.

SALLY QUINN Journalist

Concentrate on the District of Columbia, because it is the capital of the world, and it's a cesspool. Things are so bad here that it will take the power and resources of the presidency to get anything done.

TODD GITLIN Professor of sociology, New York University

Convince the moneyed classes that they should keep inequality from spinning out of control. Convince those in the middle that they need solidarity with those at the bottom more than with those at the top.

PATTI SMITH Rock singer and poet

He should provide conditions that marijuana be available to the terminally ill for medicinal purposes. I'd also like to sit and discuss environmental issues with Al Gore while listening to Grateful Dead records.