Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/072792/07279923.000

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                                                                                THE CAMPAIGN, Page 34

Bill's Big Bash


In a rare show of unity and Hollywood razzmatazz, the Democrats
pull off the perfect G.O.P. convention

By MARGARET CARLSON -- With reporting by Priscilla Painton and
Walter Shapiro/New York



    Bill Clinton came into Madison Square Garden with a
second chance to explain who he is and what he cares about. He
did it by grabbing control of the convention in a way only
Republicans have known how to do until now: with an unapologetic
appeal to sentiment and a relentless approach to organizing. For
the first time, party chairman Ron Brown and the candidate were
in total synch. Together they took charge of who would be on the
podium and for how long; what would be said to the press (blue
cue cards were given to delegates for that purpose); and what
would be seen on many local stations, which were provided with
taped video clips created in the Democrats' own satellite TV
studio.

    All the energy Democrats usually expend fighting with one
another went into a big-budget Hollywood production, complete
with filmed biographies by Harry Thomason and Linda
Bloodworth-Thomason, the creators of TV's Designing Women and
Evening Shade. One of the highlights was a 1963 film clip
showing John Kennedy shaking hands in the Rose Garden with the
16-year-old Clinton, a priceless piece of celluloid that Clinton
aide Frank Greer dug out of the Kennedy Library.

    The convention was a hundred Fourth of July parades rolled
into one, a pageant of family values and up-by-the-bootstraps
success stories and patriotism, with silver confetti falling
from the sky like diamonds and 60,000 balloons blown up by
volunteers. Delegates heard The Star-Spangled Banner sung so
often by stars like Aretha Franklin and Marilyn Horne that they
may actually know all the words by now. The whole thing was as
Republican as a capital-gains-tax cut, threatening to become at
times as maudlin as Nixon's Checkers speech and as corny as
Reagan's Morning in America campaign.

    Clinton dispensed with losers' night, a Democratic
tradition whereby those vanquished in the primaries get to take
one last prime-time swipe at the winner. Jesse Jackson's ranting
took place off-camera at a Don't Mess with Jesse rally at
Harlem's Apollo Theater. By the time he took to the convention
stage on Tuesday, half-glasses perched professorially on his
nose, the anger seemed to have gone out of him. He still had the
lyrics, but the music was missing. The Democrats' other problem
child, former California Governor Jerry Brown, got only 20
minutes to put his name into nomination and have his
antiestablishment say.

    New York Governor Mario Cuomo has also had his past
differences with Clinton, causing some to worry that his
nominating speech might lack his customary fervor. But the
Delphic orator brought all his skills from Albany to Manhattan.
His voice full of fury one minute and forgiveness the next, he
called out Clinton's name no fewer than 30 times. He evoked the
image of a national parade celebrating a victory over problems
at home more joyous than the one that followed the gulf war. "So
step aside, Mr. Bush!" Cuomo shouted. "You've had your parade."

    There was much grumbling -- especially among the 15,000
journalists covering the event -- that this display of harmony
was a boring contrast to the intrafamily feuds of conventions
past. But for all its made-for-TV slickness and We Are the
World-type finale, the effort to show that Democrats believe in
the American Dream had its moments of authenticity: Senator Al
Gore's father scooping up his blond-haired grandson Albert III,
9, whose horrible brush with death was evoked in the
Tennessean's eloquent and moving acceptance speech; 12-year-old
Chelsea Clinton breaking into a smile of relief after she
reclaimed her mother's hand on the jammed podium; Hillary
Clinton and Tipper Gore dancing like two teenagers to Fleetwood
Mac's Don't Stop.

    The convention showed that the activist tie-dyed Democrats
who wrested control of the party in 1968 are grown up now with
children and mortgages. Middle America, with its ritual and
sentiment and well-tended lawns, is less to be derided on
Saturday Night Live than emulated. Four years ago, Clinton could
not have been sure that when he recited part of the Pledge of
Allegiance in his speech the audience would spontaneously join
in and finish the final phrase with him.

    The scene on the podium after the two acceptance speeches
was like a wedding reception where the bride and groom fan out
to dance with the rest of the family. It was a Norman Rockwell
tableau that could persuade older voters that the first
all-baby-boomer ticket won't ignore them, signaling that while
they may be the younger generation, they are still the type to
bring the grandchildren home for the holidays.

    Bush's campaign staff back in Washington, wowed by the
display, was hit with the realization that Clinton and Gore are
prepared to fight for every bit of schmaltzy turf this time
around. They learned that Clinton was ready to take aim at the
President in what promises to be a brutal fall campaign. One of
the most powerful passages in Clinton's acceptance speech was
this challenge: "And so I say, George Bush, if you won't use
your power to help America, step aside. I will."

    No amount of planning could have predicted the unexpected
bouquet Ross Perot would throw conventioneers when he cited a
revitalized Democratic Party as one reason he was dropping his
campaign. Just before 11 a.m. on Thursday, strategist James
Carville bounded into Clinton's 14th-floor suite at the Hotel
Inter-Continental to announce that Perot was about to hold a
news conference. Still dressed in his running shorts and
tinkering with his acceptance speech, Clinton jumped up and
turned on the television. "He was a little overwhelmed,"
reported an aide.

    Clinton continued revising his speech, adding a few lines
inviting Perot's followers into the Democratic fold. Late in the
afternoon, when some aides complained that the speech was too
long, the candidate defended it by claiming that it had fewer
words than Michael Dukakis' 1988 oration. Actually, the
Massachusetts Governor's text was shorter, and his
lightning-fast diction made his delivery time shorter still. In
his own laid-back drawl, Clinton took about 55 minutes to
deliver his address. Recalling the fiasco of Clinton's
interminable 1988 speech, his verbosity last week seemed on the
verge of losing his audience, but a powerful delivery and some
surefire applause lines saved the day.

    On a practical level, the lack of internal squabbling
means the Democrats are already organizing for the fall, sending
new staffers for a four-day training session in New Jersey.
Overcoming the rivalries of previous election years, many state
party and Clinton campaign staffs will work as one. At a
fund-raising party in the wee hours of Friday morning, the first
ever to capitalize on post-convention euphoria, Clinton and Gore
collected at least $3.4 million.

    The Year of the Woman may be the most overworked cliche of
the 1992 political season. But at this convention, as Clinton
put it, the women made up "a league of their own." Mostly on
the outside when the men in charge were creating the S&L mess,
running up the deficit and awarding themselves a midnight pay
raise, women candidates -- including the Democrats' Senate
aspirants -- are now reaping the benefit of a widespread
yearning for new faces and wholesale change. Women's rights --
particularly the right to choose an abortion -- were one of the
convention's most prominent themes. Apart from his formal
acceptance speech, Clinton decided to give his only public
address to the National Women's Political Caucus, where some of
the nation's women office seekers were assembled onstage.
Clinton is fond of pointing out that he is the son of a strong
mother, the husband of a strong wife and the father of a
daughter who wants to grow up to build space stations. He
received a foot-stomping cheer when he said, "I don't believe
it runs a man down to build a woman up."

    Most of all, the convention was about giving a fuller
picture of Clinton's character after the beating it took in the
primary season and the pummeling Republicans are sure to give
it in the fall. If the Bush forces doubt that Democrats are
prepared to engage them on the values front, they should play
a video of the Clintons' triumphant two-block march from the
basement of Macy's to the convention hall after the Ohio
delegation put the nominee over the top at 10:54 p.m. Entering
the Garden to a shower of confetti and 30 minutes of boisterous
cheering, the couple and their young daughter looked as happy
and wholesome as a family can be.

    Before the convention, Clinton said he wanted people to
know that there is a central core in him that they can relate
to and trust. "When they know me better, they will know that
about me." Just by making it to the arena, after all the rough
and bitter days and nights when he did not skulk away, Clinton
has shown that there is some iron in that core. Unlike Perot,
he does not quit when he tires of the ordeal or blame others
for his troubles. Clinton will find out in November whether the
public came to know him better this week and liked what they
saw.