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                                                                                U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 43

Countdown Mentality


Why Clinton's cautious team is focusing on how many days remain
until the election

By WALTER SHAPIRO/LITTLE ROCK -- With reporting by Priscilla
Painton with Clinton


     For weeks, the Clinton high command has been consumed by
a single statistic -- no, not poll ratings nor the number of
times George Bush claims that the Arkansas Governor raised
taxes. Rather, the figure that obsesses them is the precise
number of days remaining until America votes. Over late-night
dinners at favored Little Rock restaurants like Doe's Eat Place,
they eagerly parse the digits: Are we now closer to Nov. 3 than
to the Democratic Convention? (Yes.) Should we count Election
Day itself? (Yes.) On the stump, Clinton betrays the same
nervous exactitude about the political calendar, asking students
at the University of New Mexico last Friday, "If I fight for 46
days for your future, will you join me?"

    This countdown mentality is akin to that of a child
reckoning how long he must stay on best behavior until
Christmas. The Clinton camp still only half believes the polls
-- both the national ones that mostly give them a double-digit
lead and their own state surveys that show them clearly ahead
in such G.O.P. bastions as Florida, North Carolina and Kentucky.
But along with success has come a cautious reluctance to mess
with a winning formula. Nothing angers the Clinton cadre like
the charge that they are sitting on their lead. "In the past
few weeks, we've gone before the American Legion and the
National Guard," says a Clinton insider. "If you saw what we did
in Salt Lake City, you can't say that we're not taking chances."

    Both sides are playing the campaign as if it were an
intricate daily chess game. Take the subtle feints and
counterfeints behind last Tuesday's back-to-back appearances by
Bush and Clinton before the National Guard convention in Salt
Lake City. Even the Clinton team admits that Bush played like
an international grand master. The first move belonged to the
President, who announced at the last minute that he would speak
to the National Guard, presumably to attack Clinton on the
draft. Clinton responded by scrambling his schedule and racing
to Salt Lake City.

    Bush, speaking first, surprised Clinton by taking the high
road, skirting the draft issue while making an eloquent case
that combat experience helps forge a better President. In what
Clinton aide Paul Begala calls a rush "cut-and-paste job," the
Democratic nominee then deleted an elaborate defense of his
draft record from his own speech to change its emphasis to
(surprise!) the economy. The result: a drawn game.

    The risk is a campaign that revolves around gamesmanship
rather than substance. Right after Labor Day, Clinton stepped
in to tone down the hyperactivity of the campaign's war room,
with its zeal to respond instantly to every G.O.P. charge. The
constant counterpunching, Clinton believed, was overshadowing
his larger message. Within the campaign, the power of the war
room and its generals -- communications director George
Stephanopoulos and top strategist James Carville -- has been a
source of envy. "It has taken George and Carville months to
realize that they have to trust Bill Clinton's instincts," says
a well-placed campaign official.

    Clinton's instincts these days err on the side of caution.
The once accessible candidate now travels almost completely
cordoned off from his press corps. Impromptu press conferences
are discouraged because as Begala -- the traveling strategist
and speechwriter -- puts it, "they just don't look very
presidential."

    Sensitive to the charge that he has become a
promise-them-anything candidate, Clinton last week returned to
using some tough-talk words like "responsibility," telling the
University of New Mexico students, "No more across-the-board
something for nothing." But too often Clinton cannot resist the
temptation to gull his audiences with the illusion that the path
to painless prosperity can be paved solely with the savings from
defense cuts.

    For months the Clinton campaign mantra has been "We are
not like Michael Dukakis." Nothing better illustrates the
difference than the avidity with which Clinton is cramming for
his first debate. He has held two preparation sessions with his
debate team, focusing on his two most potentially vulnerable
areas -- his Arkansas record and foreign policy. On the road,
Clinton studies his debate books almost daily. For weeks, aides
have worried that Clinton is too wedded to complex six-part
answers and too conciliatory to perform as a properly aggressive
debater. That is why the goal this time is to give Clinton an
overarching theme with which to frame all his debate answers.

    But for the moment, the two sides bicker. Focus-group
research has convinced the Clinton team that they have a winning
issue in Bush's reluctance to debate. Clinton campaign chairman
Micky Kantor argues, "If you are going to develop a mandate --
and have a successful presidency -- it is important to use the
debate process to reach 90 million Americans." But the rest of
the campaign is about a mandate to govern as well. So the
question remains: Will Clinton use his lead to talk honestly to
the voters, or merely try to nurse it as he counts down the days
until Nov. 3?