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Text File | 1992-01-19 | 6KB | 104 lines

                         Bill Clinton

    In 1978, Bill Clinton, a graduate of Georgetown, Yale and
 Oxford and Arkansas' attorney general, became governor of
 that Southern state. He was 32.
    Clinton, a former choir boy, was the youngest governor in
 the US in 40 years. Many thought he was on his way to the
 presidency. Now at age 45, in his 5th term as governor,
 Clinton is ready for that challenge. He declined to run in
 1988, saying his family was not prepared. Today, many
 pundits tout Clinton as a fresh, moderate alternative to the
 Democratic Party's tarnished liberal tradition.
    Clinton helped found the Democratic Leadership Council, a
 group that thinks the party should adopt a more centrist
 agenda in order to regain a larger portion of America's
 alienated middle class--and retake the White House. His DLC
 duties gave him more national recognition and a broader
 perspective on national problems.
    With that background, his outlook combines compassion
 with self-reliance. He says the poor should be helped, but
 that everybody who can work should work. And he stresses
 that the Democratic message of "opportunity for all"
 includes the middle class.
   Improving education has been the cornerstone of Clinton's
 tenure as governor. In 1987, his increased expenditures for
 education triggered property tax hikes throughout Arkansas--
 and gained him national recognition as a decisive leader.
    Clinton feels the nation needs to rediscover personal
 responsibility. He criticizes parents who abandon their
 families to welfare and high-rolling financiers who caused
 the $500 billion savings and loan crisis. "The biggest
 flight from personal responsibility in the 1980s," said
 Clinton in a speech in New Hampshire, "came from the people
 at the top of the totem pole, not at the bottom."
    Bill Clinton lost his first election, for the House of
 Representatives, in 1976. Two years later he was elected
 Arkansas' governor, and 2 years after that he was upset in
 the Reagan landslide of 1980. He was elected governor again
 in 1982, reelected in 1984, 1986 and again in 1990.
    He has served as chairman of the Natl Governors Assn and
 the Democratic Governors Assn. This summer, in a Newsweek
 poll, Clinton's fellow governors chose him the nation's most
 effective governor. (Michael Dukakis, as governor of
 Massachusetts, won a similar honor in 1986.)
    Clinton and his wife Hilary have a daughter, Chelsea, 11.

                Clinton's Program

    Like other Democrats, Bill Clinton hopes to paint Bush as
 a president more concerned with foreign countries than with
 the US. Clinton has charged that Bush "has a more detailed
 domestic plan for the Soviet Union than he does for New
 Hampshire or Arkansas or any other part of the country."
    Education will also be a central ingredient in Clinton's
 proposed cure for America's economic and social problems. He
 thinks that teacher salaries have to increase dramatically
 to attract higher caliber instructors. For Clinton and
 others, better teachers mean better education.
   Clinton wants to increase the government funding of
 education at all levels, from the Head Start skills program
 for preschoolers and other young children to national
 apprenticeship programs for high school students who prefer
 blue collar careers. He wants to create new loan programs
 for college-bound students who cannot afford to pay the
  skyrocketing cost of higher education.
    "This idea the Bush administration has, that the Reagan
 administration had before it, of cutting middle class people
 out of federal aid for college is nuts," Clinton recently
 told a New Hampshire audience.
    Clinton admits he has little foreign policy experience.
 And he says: "If people don't feel I can be trusted to
 defend national security, then they shouldn't vote for me,
 because that's the first job of a president."
    Fund-raising may also be a problem for Clinton. His home
 base is small and in the deep South, far from the media
 centers of New York and Los Angeles. Yet, his hiring of Bob
 Farmer, a Boston-based "super fund-raiser," and Clinton's
 high name-recognition among party loyalists could make those
 concerns irrelevant.

                The Clinton Campaign

    Ever since 1987, when Bill Clinton declined to run for
 the Democratic nomination for president in 1988, he has been
 considered a prime challenger to unseat George Bush. His
 chairmanship of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) gave
 him a national platform to test his theories on audiences of
 party faithful.
    In August 1991, he resigned from the DLC and announced
 the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. That
 was a week after Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa), once
 considered a strong, likely candidate, decided not to run.
     With Bush enjoying high public approval ratings and
 America seemingly comfortable with Republicans in the White
 House--the GOP has won the last 3 presidential races and 5
 of the last 6 since 1968--the Democrats need something
 special in 1992.
    Strategists on both sides say that the attempt by Clinton
 and the DLC to redefine the Democrats as more Republican
 won't work. Kevin Phillips, a Republican, says: "The problem
 is the Democrats aren't going to get anywhere unless they
 have a cutting edge, and you don't get a cutting edge by
 being a "me-too" party."