Cuomo to Challenge Bush Policies on Domestic Issues : Politics: N.Y. governor, sounding like a presidential candidate, says the economy has never been weaker.

New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, sounding more than ever like a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, vows that he will soon begin traveling the country to challenge President Bush on national issues “wherever they will give me a platform.”

After more than 10 years of Republican rule, Cuomo declared in an interview with The Times, “we have a federal debt so large people can’t even remember its size and we have never been weaker” economically or in most other ways.

Cuomo’s plan to begin attacking Bush in appearances across the nation reflects the beginning of serious stirrings among potential Democratic challengers in the 1992 election campaign. For months, prospective Democratic candidates have seemed reluctant to tackle an extraordinarily popular Republican President.

At least five other Democrats are also starting to test the waters for next year’s race.

This increasing activity springs from “a growing awareness that Bush is not invulnerable” despite his high standing in public opinion polls, says Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), who ran in 1988 but will not be a candidate this time.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee, another 1988 candidate who is pondering whether to run again, said: “I’m convinced the President is going to be extremely vulnerable in November, 1992, because I don’t think he’s going to suddenly change and address the issues people really care about with anything like the passion and commitment he brings to foreign policy.”

In fact, while Bush’s ratings in the polls remain unusually high, they already have slipped somewhat as the euphoria over the quick victory in the Persian Gulf War has faded and the focus of the news has shifted to the plight of the Kurds and other Iraqi war refugees--as well as to the depressed economy and other pressing domestic problems.

The President’s political fortunes could suffer a more serious decline, some Republican strategists acknowledge, if the current recession continues into 1992, as some economists are now predicting it will, and if the eventual recovery is as anemic as many now predict.

Cuomo, one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush Administration, would be an early favorite to win the Democratic nomination if he does decide to run. Several prominent Democrats, including former Sen. George S. McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, and former party chairmen Robert S. Strauss and John C. White are urging him to seek the nomination.

In the interview, the New York governor said that the key to a Democratic challenge to Bush was to articulate a clear difference in basic values.

“I believe with everything in me that the most glaring omission in today’s politics, especially for the Democrats, is a clear, articulation of values, something you believe in,” he said.

“The ideal for me would be to write down about what you believe in government and politics on a card and carry it that way, the way Catholics used to carry the Apostles’ Creed, and take it out and cite what you believe.”

Faulting Bush for “a fundamental lack of direction,” Cuomo said he will travel the country criticizing policies that he said have led to “a growing underclass, a deteriorating infrastructure and a softening of our economic strength.” The country, he said, “has never been weaker.”

He said that while recent presidential campaigns have started too early, the Democrats “do have to get the process started soon” and field some candidates for the nomination.

Cuomo said that whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination “should be able to clearly articulate views that are different from George Bush’s.”

He dismissed contentions that his state’s financial problems would hobble a Cuomo presidential campaign. “Whatever happens, whoever the Democratic candidate is,” he said, “I’m intrigued by the Republicans’ idea that a nominee from New York would be in the position of having to defend New York.”

Although insisting he still has made no decision to run, Cuomo said that the state budget will be adopted within the next few weeks and that then, “I’ll be talking everywhere they will give me a platform to see whether it would be an albatross or the best evidence that the state is meeting its problems while the federal government is in the worst shape ever.”

Many Republicans believe that even if Cuomo resolves the state’s financial dilemma, he will remain vulnerable on other grounds, including the myriad problems afflicting New York City, especially crime. GOP strategists also maintain that, in the wake of the Gulf War victory, Cuomo will find it difficult to defend remarks he made last November, when he called on President Bush to “try to negotiate our way out” of the confrontation, perhaps by giving Saddam Hussein part of Kuwait.

But at least one prominent Republican, former President Richard M. Nixon, says that Cuomo “would be the strongest possible” nominee the Democrats could field against Bush, according to McGovern. The former South Dakota senator, beaten by Nixon in the 1972 presidential race, said Nixon made the comment when they happened to be sitting together during a recent Trump Shuttle flight from Washington to New York.

Strauss, who confers regularly with Cuomo, says he is convinced that if the governor “gets his budget situation worked out, he will take a very, very serious look at running and I would think odds are in favor of his running. He’s saying and trying to do all the right things that a candidate would do.”

White said that while “it’s unfashionable for Democrats to harbor realistic hopes for victory in 1992,” he believes that Cuomo could beat Bush “because the war situation may not be such a credit by next year, the economy is in bad shape and joblessness is going up, and this Administration has no domestic agenda and they make no bones about it.”

Ex-Sen. Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts is the only Democrat so far to say that he will become a candidate, but other potential contenders include Gore, McGovern, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, Sen. Bob Kerry of Nebraska, Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988.

McGovern, who ran for the nomination in 1988 but dropped out after the early primaries, said that he will not run if Cuomo makes the race. McGovern’s old political associates are urging him not to run regardless of what Cuomo does, he said, because they fear that another losing race would diminish his public stature and label him “a Democratic Harold Stassen”--a reference to the former Minnesota governor who became the butt of political jokes by running unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination nine times.

McGovern said that Nixon, who had just finished briefing President Bush after a recent trip to the Soviet Union, also discussed the pros and cons of a possible McGovern campaign during their impromptu conversation.

If you want to run again for the nomination and have something to say that is different from the other candidates, McGovern said Nixon told him, “then you have to decide whether you can be heard above the tumult and the ridicule and criticism and brickbats that go with a presidential campaign.”

“That’s good advice and I’m considering it,” McGovern said in an interview.

Clinton, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, has told friends that he thinks Bush can be beaten and he will “take a hard look” at running for his party’s nomination after the DLC’s annual meeting in Cleveland May 6-7.

In an interview, Clinton said that he has not made up his mind on running but will have to resign as DLC chairman if he decides to make the race. He called Cuomo “a very compelling man” and said: “I think he is going to run, I’ve always thought there was a good shot he’d do it and, if he does, he’ll fill a large space.”

Clinton, like Cuomo an outspoken critic of Bush’s policies, says that while Americans are glorying in the Persian Gulf War victory, they should ask themselves: If things keep going the way they are, could we lead an effort like this 10 or 20 years from now? Can we preserve the American dream in an environment in which, year in and year out, middle-income people see declines in their real incomes?”

In a series of speeches around the country, Clinton has pointed out that middle-income families saw their net earnings decline about 3.5% in the 1980s. “Even more shocking,” he said, “is what is happening to younger, uneducated working people. People under 25 with a high school diploma are earning 25% less than they were 15 years ago in real dollars.”

DEMOCRATIC POSSIBILITIES

New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo is sounding more than ever like a candidate for the Democratic nomination. He says he will travel the country and challenge President Bush on national issues “wherever they will give me a platform.” Who are the Democrats’ best hopes? New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Former Sen. George S. McGovern, South Dakota Sen. Albert Gore Jr., Tennessee Sen. Bob Kerrey, Nebraska Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton Virginia Go L. Douglas Wilder Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas