W Bowman Cutter

When Alice Rivlin stepped up to the podium last December to accept her appointment as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, the television cameras saw nothing but the thicket of microphones that towered over the diminutive economist's head.

When Alice Rivlin stepped up to the podium last December to accept her appointment as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, the television cameras saw nothing but the thicket of microphones that towered over the diminutive economist's head.

STRAINS OF AUTUMN: Political turf fights in the nation's capital are about as predictable, although not as pretty, as leaf turnings on the Mall in October. One such tussle, embroiling economic pooh-bahs at the Treasury Department and White House, threatens sensitive U.S. trade talks with the Japanese. . . . Lawrence H.

Five days before a deadline for U.S. retaliation, Japan and the United States ended a bitter dispute over access to Japan's cellular telephone market Saturday, raising prospects for a resumption of broader talks that could ease trade tensions. The agreement aims to allow Motorola Inc. to compete on an equal basis with Japanese companies in providing cellular phone service in the heavily populated region stretching from Tokyo to Nagoya.

For President Clinton, bringing the world to the Rust Belt to talk about jobs Monday represented a risky gambit to transplant his liberal Democratic domestic agenda into the rarefied air of the international economic arena. For the first time, Clinton sought to turn over an entire summit of Western industrialized nations to a debate on one specific economic problem that is normally the preserve of domestic politics--joblessness.

After concluding two days of intense discussions, weary Japanese and American negotiators late Monday night said they had made little progress toward constructing a new framework for talks to reverse deteriorating trade relations. American negotiators conceded they are unlikely to reach an agreement before world leaders gather here for the July 7 Group of Seven summit. Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and President Clinton set that deadline for themselves during their April meeting in Washington.

President Clinton, hoping to plug a gap in one of the most successful sectors of his Administration, turned to Wall Street veteran Robert E. Rubin Tuesday to replace Lloyd Bentsen as Treasury secretary. Clinton announced Bentsen's resignation, effective Dec. 22, and the selection of Rubin at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

A few weeks ago, one of the Clinton Administration's senior policy-makers recalled with annoyance the time last year when Japan argued that its airlines were too economically fragile to permit new competition from American carriers. "Here we've had bankruptcies, restructuring, a real shakeout in our own airline industry," the U.S. official said. "Now that we're lean and mean, they can't keep us out. Japan can't say we're too good and ban us from their market.

When President Clinton met with congressional leaders in the White House for the first time to discuss his economic agenda, Robert E. Rubin was by his side. When Clinton met privately with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin was there, too. And when the White House sent out urgent requests to Cabinet departments for specific proposals to round out Clinton's emergency jobs program, Rubin was doing the asking.

The Clinton administration is already under fire for being too late in recognizing--and in moving to contain--the Asian financial crisis. Now critics are asking a more fundamental question: Is it doing too little as well?

When Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa arrives here for Friday's summit with President Clinton, he is likely to find that the red carpet welcoming him has a very different hue than the one rolled out for his predecessors during the good old days of the Cold War. The pomp and protocol will not be all that different, but the diplomatic overtones will.