Clinton, Wilder Focus on Economic, Race Issues : Politics: Southern governors end on optimistic note in appearances before Democratic leaders.

Two Southern Democratic governors, Arkansas’ Bill Clinton and Virginia’s L. Douglas Wilder, Saturday painted a somber picture of a nation weakened by outmoded economic policies and divided by racial tensions as they sought backing for their presidential candidacies from state leaders of their party from around the nation.

Yet both also concluded on a note of vigorous optimism for the country and for Democratic hopes of regaining the White House in 1992.

Clinton, who proclaimed that “this is not just another campaign,” called on Democrats to join him in “a crusade to retain American greatness.”

And Wilder, who declared, “The American people are always ahead of their leaders,” cited his success in his own state, which in 1989 made him the nation’s first elected black governor, as a symbol of hope for establishing racial harmony and equity.

“Virginia was no aberration,” he said. “I believe that when I was elected governor it wasn’t because of something in the water there. I believe people came to understand that qualification and merit are still the order of the day in America.”

Both candidates addressed the closing session of a two-day meeting of the Assn. of State Democratic Chairs, which Friday heard from their four rivals for the nomination--Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas and former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

Clinton appeared to earn the most enthusiastic reception of all the contenders during both days with a relatively polished and well-balanced speech to the 100 or so Democratic leaders from 40 states. He first accused the Bush Administration of pursuing short-sighted and narrow-minded policies and then offered a set of Democratic answers.

“I believe this is the eleventh hour,” he said. “Our county is going in the wrong direction and we must struggle to keep the American dream alive.”

He criticized Bush for failing to meet the leadership responsibilities of his office, but he contended that part of the blame for the nation’s condition lay with the Democratic Congress for endorsing many of the economic measures of the Reagan-Bush era.

“Our country needs desperately to be coming together, but we are coming apart at the seams,” he warned. “I have been in schools where children do bullet drills instead of fire drills. I have been in houses where people are afraid to walk up and down the stairs.” To deal with its problems, Clinton said, the nation needs “unity and common purpose and the courage to change. That is what this election about.

“We must all cooperate, business and labor, government and business, so we can grow instead of shrink. And we must go back to an investment economy, not one that squanders our precious heritage,” Clinton declared. “We have to say to America that we are going to invest in America again, we are going to work together again and we are going to win again in the global economy.”

Wilder focused a good part of his remarks on racial tensions in the country, which he attributed in part to Bush’s tactics in his 1988 campaign and to the President’s “cynically” using the issue of quotas during the public debate on the recently signed civil rights bill.

“George Bush is content to divide and conquer instead of dealing with the the domestic problems of the country,” he said. Declaring that Pentagon officials control military policy and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu controls domestic policy, Wilder asked: “What does that leave George Bush in charge of?

“The golf cart,” he answered.

Wilder briefly sketched his Put America First program to “jump-start” the economy by trimming $50 billion from the budget by cutting waste, low priority items and defense spending, and using the savings for a middle-class tax cut and to fund new programs at the state level.

He presented himself as an apostle of fiscal responsibility and pledged to help trim the budget deficit, but offered few specifics except to say, “We should put necessities before niceties” and to cite his record in Virginia.

“You can’t deal with deficit reduction until you get elected,” he told reporters later. “You’ve got to be there to do it.”

The optimism that marked the sessions in Chicago continued in Iowa on Saturday night, where five of the six major Democratic contenders spoke to several hundred party members.

“Today, Americans are saying that it is possible that George Bush will be a one-term President,” said Kerrey.

Bush was trounced in Iowa in February of 1988 and needed strong wins in New Hampshire and in the South to claim the Republican nomination. “If it had been up to you, George Bush wouldn’t be in the White House today,” Clinton noted to applause.

By this time in the election cycle in previous races, the Democratic candidates had set up virtual residence in Iowa. But the presence in the race of Harkin, the state’s junior senator, has prompted other candidates to limit their time in the state, where the first presidential caucuses will be held next February.

Not surprisingly, most in the crowd gathered for the state party’s Jefferson-Jackson fund-raising dinner were Harkin partisans. Their favorite son returned their ardor with a thumping denunciation of President Bush, whom he blamed for financial decline and social ills in America.

“George Bush has taken the party of Abraham Lincoln and turned it into the party of David Duke,” he said, referring to the recently defeated Republican candidate for governor of Louisiana.

But other candidates were unwilling to cede Iowa entirely to Harkin. Both Clinton and Tsongas in their appeals alluded to the Iowa-based movie “Field of Dreams.”

Brown, in a slamming assault on incumbents of both parties, accused congressmen of raising their own pay last year by an amount “higher than the salaries of most of the people of Iowa.”

Wilder was scheduled to attend the meeting, but was kept from it by a fierce snowstorm that disrupted travel throughout Iowa.