Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/012092/0120103.000

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                                                                                NATION, Page 18

THE POLITICAL INTEREST

Why Clinton Is Catching On


By Michael Kramer


    The calls were made at around 5 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 6.
"Bad news," one of Mario Cuomo's aides told George Friedman,
the Democratic leader of the Bronx. ``The Governor's out of
it." Cracked Friedman: "Everybody knows that. Now tell me about
his plans." Assured that the message was not about Cuomo's
mental state and that the Governor really was pulling the plug
on an incipient favorite-son presidential candidacy, Friedman
and his Democratic machine colleagues across New York State
were finally liberated to chart their own course. Five hours
later a number of them, including Friedman, had thrown their
support to Bill Clinton. By week's end even Representative Tom
Manton, the Democratic leader of Cuomo's home county, Queens,
was on board with the Arkansas Governor.

    The man who brokered the endorsements was Harold Ickes
Jr., a longtime liberal activist who has supported every
far-left Democratic presidential candidate from Eugene McCarthy
to Jesse Jackson. "When you consider Harold's politics and then
the fact that Manton supported Bush on the gag rule on abortion,
you have to concede that a coalition is being built," says
Sarah Kovner, another New York liberal activist in Clinton's
corner.

    But why exactly is Clinton catching on across the
Democrats' ideological spectrum? Why are the likes of Ickes and
Manton and an increasing number of Democratic fat cats and
trade-union leaders flocking to a centrist Southern Governor so
soon after most of them swore they'd be long dead before either
they or the country would again support another Deep South
Democrat?

    In part, Clinton's prominence is due to the flatness of
the field around him. Massachusetts' Paul Tsongas will probably
be considered a regional candidate even if he wins the Feb. 18
primary in next-door New Hampshire. Jerry Brown is still
orbiting a distant planet. Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has been
tarnished by conflict-of-interest reports, his failure to flesh
out a specific message beyond a comprehensive national
health-care plan, and an emerging perception that he is little
more than a biography in a suit. And then there is Iowa Senator
Tom Harkin, whose embodiment of Rooseveltian notions of
government intervention should command liberal loyalties.
Instead Harkin is watching helplessly as crucial elements of
what should be his core constituency, the country's leading
white-collar union leaders, conclude that he is too strident and
too liberal to appeal broadly in a general election. "Harkin
sounds wonderful," says Lenore Miller, the head of the Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union, who has signed on with
Clinton. "But it's all too parochial."

    It is the judgment about Harkin that best explains the
rush to Clinton. It is as though the liberals who have
dominated the Democrats' nominating process for 20 years have
all grown up at once. "We've indulged our hearts long enough,"
says Ickes. "We've lost the White House and consoled ourselves
with Democratic Congresses. But it's clear that when you control
Congress you control nothing. We want to win, so we overlook
things like Bill's support of the death penalty and the gulf
war. It's that simple."

    Clinton is also helped by his becoming the latest darling
of the press, which is eager to impose some order on the race.
Many of the influential political writers who have urged the
Democrats to nominate a more conservative candidate see Clinton
as the fulfillment of their own prescription for victory. "But
it's not just hype," says Joe McDermott, who leads New York
State's civil service workers. "Clinton has actually held a job
where he's seen things tried and fail in the real world. He can
go to the country with something more than words, which can make
Bush's attack harder to sustain."

    Even the teachers' unions, with which Clinton has crossed
swords, are signing on. "He's truly improved the schools," says
Sandra Feldman of the United Federation of Teachers, who points
to Arkansas' being the first state to require eighth-graders to
pass a standardized exam before going on to high school -- a
Clinton reform that helps explain why Arkansas now has the best
high school graduation rate in the South. "Not a bad record to
throw against the `education President,' " says Feldman.

    Among voters at large, Clinton's insistence that
responsibilities accompany rights is resonating as a Democratic
answer to the family-values themes that George Bush and Ronald
Reagan have used to capture crucial middle-class Democrats. One
particular expression of Clinton's approach, Arkansas' denial
of a driver's license to school dropouts, wins applause before
every audience he addresses, including two recent gatherings of
wealthy Republicans.

    By unashamedly wooing Republicans and independents even
before the first Democratic primary, Clinton is bettering his
chances for ultimate success. For decades now, Democrats have
had to run left to win their party's nomination and then right
to contest the general election, an ideological zigzag that has
alienated many voters. What Clinton seems to understand is that
U.S. presidential politics is not two one-act plays but a single
play with two acts. "Yeah," says Rich Bond, one of the
President's top campaign advisers. "It looks like this guy may
actually get it."