Bill Clinton’s outburst last week at women’s groups who were "playing quota games" by carping about the number of women in his Cabinet was a welcome gesture of independence from the parochial agendas of Democratic interest groups. But it was also vaguely reminiscent of Lord Byron’s line about a conflicted maiden:

A little she strove, and much repented.

And whispering "I will ne’er consent"-consented.

Even as he denounced "quota games, Clinton was accommodating the quota psychology by giving assurances that his ”look like America" Cabinet would have at least four women (it does), and by suggesting that one or more prime candidates had been nudged aside on grounds of white maleness. Indeed, the Clinton transition team had signaled for weeks that no males-at least, no white males-would even be considered for attorney general.

The scuffling over the Clinton Cabinet’s chromosome count is a harbinger of a far more consequential, if less visible, struggle that will rage inside the Clinton coalition in 1993 and beyond, over how hard civil-rights enforcers should push the nation’s employers to pursue diversity through use of preferences for women and, especially, minorities.

Striking the right balance in this area will be exceedingly difficult even for one so adroit as Clinton at tempering his commendable pursuit of diversity with a well-timed shot at quota-minded "bean counters." The greatest danger to Clinton, and to this multiracial nation’s future, is that his administration will quietly succumb to unrelenting pressure from civil-rights and women’s groups to adopt their legal agenda wholesale. This would not merely give employers a healthy incentive to seek diversity; it would institutionalize something very like quotas throughout the American work force.