Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/061592/06159926.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 5KB | 109 lines

                                                                                U.S. POLITICS, Page 33

Clinton Plays It Cool


The Democratic nominee will need more than a sax and shades,
however, to stay relevant in a three-man race

By WALTER SHAPIRO


    By appearing on The Arsenio Hall Show last week, Bill
Clinton may have discovered the formula to revive his stalled
campaign: exploit his sax appeal. During the brief rehearsal for
the talk show, the visiting saxophone player joked nervously
with the band, "If I screw up, play louder." Clinton need not
have worried. So what if his wraparound shades were borrowed
from an aide, the phosphorescent blue-and-yellow tie came from
the show's wardrobe department, and some of the cool was donated
by the adoring host? The image that came across on TV was that
of a relaxed, self-deprecating candidate ("That's how I learned
to inhale -- playing my saxophone") far different from the
too-eager-to-please Slick Willie persona of the early primaries.

    The challenge facing Clinton is both simple and serious:
How does he reintroduce himself to voters enraptured with the
mystique of Ross Perot? For years, Clinton had been carefully
prepping for a race where he would be the agent of change, the
only alternative to the do-nothing status quo of George Bush.
Now it is Perot who embodies this anti-Establishment anger,
while the Democratic challenger is suddenly relegated to an
uncomfortable me-too role as the candidate offering change for
the timid voters still loyal to the orthodoxies of two-party
politics. As a longtime friend of Clinton puts it, "Bill has to
rethink this race because Perot has taken some of the ground
that he intended to occupy. But until now Bill has been too
tired, and too occupied with the primaries, to rethink
anything."

    The candidate's physical and mental fatigue is
understandable. Last Monday -- the day before Clinton swept
California and five other primaries to put him over the top in
delegates -- he embarked on a grueling tour of California's
media markets. It was the kind of old-fashioned campaign day
that probably should be preserved in amber and sent to the
Smithsonian because, as Perot has demonstrated, presidential
candidates no longer have to put their bodies on the line like
this to get TV attention. First stop was the tiny San Joaquin
Valley farm town of Kerman, a 40-minute motorcade ride from the
Fresno airport. At a lunchtime rally in Oakland, Clinton lapsed
into an inadvertent parody of his all-things-to-all-voters style
when he declared, "I want you to know that I am a pro-growth,
pro-business and pro-labor, pro-education, pro-health care,
pro-environment, pro-family, pro-choice Democrat." Finally, the
Arkansas Governor ended up back in Los Angeles for a rally at
the UCLA campus. Small wonder, after this kind of forced-march
campaigning, that a top Clinton aide said, "We've just got to
get rid of these three-event, three-airport days."

    What accentuates the toll on Clinton is that he is not
only the candidate but also the top strategist. So far, the
Clinton camp has been remarkably free of the public backbiting
that afflicts most campaigns, though there are internal turf
battles between longtime loyalists and the Democratic hired guns
recruited for the race. But, more important, there is scant
evidence that the Clinton campaign has developed a game plan
bold enough to regain momentum in the most volatile and
unorthodox presidential race in recent U.S. history.

    It is fine for senior strategist James Carville to say,
"We have to keep on doing what we've been doing. We've just got
to do it better. We've let everyone but ourselves define us." It
is fine for the campaign to buy network time this month to
display Clinton in two or three half-hour town meetings,
beginning as early as this week. But is this enough?

    Epic change is in the air: Perot could transform the
two-party system in as dramatic a fashion as the fall of
communism altered geopolitics. All too often, however, Clinton
still acts like an old-line Democratic candidate, flying off to
a Texas party dinner, courting constituency groups like the
American Association of Retired Persons, and even scheduling a
trip to Las Vegas next week to address an annual convention of
AFSCME, the public employees union. Meanwhile, the selection of
a vice-presidential candidate is probably a month away. The
Arkansas Governor remains coy on the subject beyond admitting
the obvious: "I have quite a long list -- and it's not as long
as it once was." (One name crossed out is that of New Jersey
Senator Bill Bradley, who has convinced Clinton that he
genuinely does not want the job.)

    In New Hampshire last February, when the airwaves were
filled with talk of Gennifer Flowers and draft records, Clinton
proved that he was that rare Timex-watch candidate, who could
"take a licking but keep on ticking." Now he has sailed through
the primaries, averted new scandals and stands on the cusp of
the Democratic nomination. Rather than savoring that triumph,
Clinton must now confront the highest hurdle of all: he must
reach into himself and find a new way to convince the voters
that he has the vision, the verve and the vitality to lead a
troubled nation.