Clinton’s New Ideas Now Hold Audiences’ Attention : Politics: Possible 1992 Democratic contender offers a message that blends liberal and conservative themes.

When most Americans last saw Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, he was barreling through a red stage light signaling him to cut short an interminable address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

But three years later, with a brisk new speech, an array of innovative policy proposals and a dwindling supply of competitors, Clinton has emerged as one of the last hopes of moderates who believe that Democrats will not win back the White House unless they offer the voters a sharp departure from traditional liberalism.

In a series of well-received recent appearances from here to California, Clinton has blended liberal and conservative themes with new ideas--such as allowing parents greater choice in the selection of their children’s public schools--into an aggressive call for party and national reform that many find compelling.

“We thought he offered a new message, one that avoided all the one-liners about liberal and conservative, or tax and spend,” said Grady Stumbo, chairman of the Democratic Party in Kentucky, where Clinton recently spoke. “When we heard him talk, we said, ‘Now there is a candidate.’ ” For Democrats, finding any candidate is an urgent priority these days. Last week, West Virginia Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV removed himself from the race, as did House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri last month.

Only six months before the first contest in Iowa, the party still has just one official contender: former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, although Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin seems virtually certain to join him after Labor Day. Others still contemplating the race include Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.; although New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo perennially insists he has no plans to run, speculation persists that he might change his mind.

Clinton also says he has not decided whether he will join the race, though those around him acknowledge it looks more attractive with the withdrawal of Rockefeller and Gephardt--two other ideological hybrids who could have effectively competed for moderate voters. Sources say the Arkansas governor has received enough encouragement on his travels that he could establish a formal exploratory committee as soon as this week.

But, to a greater extent than the few other Democrats still actively exploring the track, Clinton is encountering turbulence even on his warm-up laps. He has spent much of the summer entangled in a series of sticky political squabbles, some centering on his role as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council--an organization of party centrists anathema to many liberals--and others bubbling up from accusations of womanizing spread publicly by political opponents in Arkansas.

For the 44-year-old Clinton--who has been touted as a potential presidential candidate ever since he was first elected governor 13 years ago--that turmoil further complicates a decision about which he appears deeply ambivalent, according to several Democrats who have spoken with him recently.

At the same time, Clinton appears acutely aware of the practical hurdles facing a politician from a small, poor state trying to assemble a credible national campaign, even in a year when the late start guarantees the quality of the candidates’ campaigns will be graded on a curve.

But most Democratic observers agree that Clinton is ready to compete with anyone on one crucial campaign test: articulating his agenda. In his appearance here, for example, he held a crowd of 150 local Democrats at rapt attention in a crowded legislative meeting room on a beckoning sunny morning. In crisp, confident tones, Clinton berated President Bush for not devoting enough attention to domestic problems, and called on his own party to find new ways of meeting its traditional goals--such as allowing young people to earn financial aid for college by performing national service as police officers or teachers, and using credit agencies to crack down on absent parents who don’t pay child support.

By the time Clinton finished, state Rep. Barbara Baldizar of Nashua was ready to begin drafting legislation to implement some of his ideas in New Hampshire. “He’s saying what 80% of the population--Republican, Democrat, libertarian--are thinking and feeling,” she said. “It’s so practical; it’s so smart.”

So far, Clinton’s carefully constructed case for reform is more cerebral than emotional. Drawing heavily on a recent book by Washington Post reporter E. J. Dionne Jr., Clinton argues that Americans have become disillusioned with politics because both parties--but particularly the GOP--have forced on them unrealistically polarized “false choices” between liberal programs and conservative values.

To regain the initiative, he says, Democrats must persuade Americans they can be trusted to defend the nation’s interests abroad and offer domestic programs as attractive to white, middle-class suburbanites as inner-city minorities.

That conviction leads Clinton down paths Democrats usually shun. He praises the President’s handling of foreign policy, saying, “I don’t only think George Bush is popular on many of these issues, I think he’s absolutely right.”

He supports “choice” programs and decentralized school-based management to reform the public schools, maintains that tenants should be given more authority to manage public housing projects and urges more emphasis on race-neutral job-training than affirmative action as the way to bridge the economic gap between blacks and whites. In particular, Clinton has proposed the creation of new apprenticeship programs that would help train young people not bound for college.

Most strikingly, Clinton insists that government should demand greater “personal responsibility” from those it helps, through such programs as work requirements for welfare recipients. In Arkansas, he has passed programs that deny driver’s licenses to teen-agers who drop out of high school and fine parents who refuse to attend conferences with their children’s teachers. “Whatever the government’s obligations,” he said during a late July speech in Oakland, “we have to get people back to assuming theirs.”

These are unusual flavors for a national Democrat to cook with, and some party activists don’t like their taste. When Clinton appeared before a group of Hollywood liberals in late July, he was barraged with accusations that his agenda represented Republican near-beer.

The focus on personal responsibility, one prominent Los Angeles liberal said, “sounds to me like a code word for something. . . . What does it mean? It means I won’t give too much money to black people. To me, that’s just trying to get the George Wallace vote in a very dressed-up way.”

Clinton vigorously rejects those charges, insisting that “this personal responsibility thing applies to everybody.” In New Hampshire, he won sustained applause when he declared “the biggest flight from responsibility in this country in the 1980s came from” corporate executives and investment bankers, not those on the bottom of the economic ladder.

Clinton appears eager to debate these issues with leaders of the party’s traditional wing--especially if that means shifting the focus from the political controversies that have dogged him in recent weeks. In New Hampshire, for example, his visit was anticipated less for his speech than his (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to resolve an ongoing feud between the local DLC chapter and the state Democratic Party, which has opposed the group’s formation in this crucial early primary state.

Most distressingly for Clinton, charges from political opponents in Arkansas that the allegations about his personal life will prevent him from seeking the presidency have forced him--alone among the handful of potential candidates--to delineate what personal questions he will and will not discuss. “You have to decide what you think is relevant to ask,” he told a group of reporters recently, “and I have to decide what the proper answer is. . . . I have to make up my mind whether I think there should be any sphere of privacy in my own life.”

All of these issues are swirling around Clinton as he nears his final decision on whether to seek the nomination. But, as he toured New Hampshire last week, he sounded like a man whose hopes were eclipsing his doubts. “I saw a lot of people in New Hampshire who looked interested in the same things I’m interested in,” he said buoyantly, as if eager to return and find more of them.

Profile: Bill Clinton Born: Aug. 19, 1946.

Hometown: Hope, Ark.

Education: BS, Georgetown University, 1968; Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, 1968-1970; JD, Yale University, 1973.

Career highlights: Professor, University of Arkansas, 1973-76; Arkansas attorney general, 1977-79; Arkansas governor, 1979-1981; attorney 1981-82; Arkansas governor, 1983-present.

Key issues: Education, health care, welfare reform, job training.