Clinton on Roll but Centrist Stance Could Be a Liability

Joe Weidner--a cold Budweiser in his hand, the collar of his checked shirt open, his arms folded across an ample belly--stood in a hotel ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, in a posture of disdain.

As Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton began to speak, Weidner leaned across to his buddy, sharing a dismissive wisecrack. But as the speech continued, he quieted.

The Republicans, Clinton was saying, had spent the last 12 years dividing the country. President Bush and his party, he said, had told people that their problems were the fault of “them--them the liberals, them the Democrats, them the poor, them the minorities.”

“But in this country,” the Democratic presidential candidate continued, “there is no them, there is only us.” The time has come “to pull this country together again.”

To his surprise, Joe Weidner began to applaud.

A union organizer and Jesse Jackson supporter four years ago, Weidner thought he knew which candidate he was going to support in 1992. “If you had asked me yesterday, I’d have said Tom Harkin’s my man,” he said, referring to the Iowa senator. But now, he added, “I’d say it’s a tossup.”

For four weeks, Clinton has been on a roll, and Weidner’s response sums up much of the reason. Alone--so far--among the Democratic presidential contenders, Clinton has demonstrated an ability to frame a message that not only mobilizes his base, but reaches beyond it. Largely on the strength of that ability, Clinton has received an early nod from the political Establishment as the lead candidate in the Democratic race.

“He is doing best at what’s most important--message making, clarity, what he’s up to, what the country has to do,” said one uncommitted Democratic strategist. “He’s much further along on that.”

The momentum has come at a good time, placing Clinton in a front-runner’s spotlight when all the candidates have been scrambling to gain the attention that attracts the money that allows them to compete over the next several months of primaries.

But now, with the preliminaries virtually out of the way, the actual campaign is about to begin. And for the 45-year-old Clinton, a host of possible problems loom.

First, there is his centrist message. On the one hand, it is Clinton’s greatest strength, giving him an aura of electability. But, in a primary process often dominated by liberal activists, it could prove his greatest potential liability.

Clinton’s message combines an appeal for government action on the issues of education and economic growth with a demand for a new sense of responsibility on the part of business, labor and government bureaucracies. At its heart is a vow to protect “the forgotten middle class.”

Clinton campaign strategists believe that message can carry the Democrats to victory against Bush, but they concede that their positions are bound to alienate some powerful primary-season constituencies--such as union activists. That problem could deepen if the campaign becomes an openly ideological one, replicating the conservative versus liberal battles of the Democratic past.

So far, however, Clinton has steered away from that potential trap. Despite urgings from some supporters who would like to see him stage a more direct battle over the future of the party, he has stuck primarily to attacking Bush.

A second problem for Clinton involves his lack of a sharply defined image. For all his successes in the campaign’s early stages, he remains far from well-known on the national scene. Now, he has just eight weeks to introduce himself to voters in New Hampshire and distinguish himself from the other candidates.

Many of Clinton’s advisers had been hoping that New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo would seek the Democratic presidential nomination, believing that their man could quickly emerge as the best alternative candidate by painting the race as a contest between new politics and old.

“I’m disappointed,” Clinton media adviser Frank Greer said after Cuomo announced he would not run. “I was looking forward to the debate.”

Now, Clinton’s campaign will face a more complicated multicandidate field. And with Cuomo out of the race, Clinton will have to introduce himself with, as he says, “a target on my back”--the dreaded label of “front-runner.”

Having eschewed trying to distinguish himself from his rivals through a straight-out ideological route, Clinton has taken on the harder task of trying to convince voters that what makes him different is that he is the one candidate who “knows what he wants to do” as President, as his campaign literature proclaims.

The difficulty, says political consultant Greg Schneiders, “is that it doesn’t seem there’s a lot of fire” in Clinton’s approach.

Even the candidate’s aides admit that in some small groups of voters that have been gathered to gauge reaction to Clinton, he has been criticized for “a lack of oomph.”

At his best, as he was in Columbus, Clinton can convey his message with a sense of passion that can turn around an audience. And in recent days, as he has refined his basic stump speech, he has emphasized lines that convey a sense of anger at the nation’s problems and that express core values, such as his call for national unity and common purpose.

At other times, however, as he lays out the specifics of his economic plan, his list of policy positions can sound like an endless series of statistics and programs, a bloodless recitation that leaves audiences impressed with his knowledge, but uncommitted to him.

The problem may be compounded by voters’ lack of knowledge about who Clinton is. “Presidential campaigns are about character as opposed to positions,” said one longtime Democratic operative. Voters want to know how “all of these expressions of policy and position spring from his personal identity, his biography.”

Campaign aides insist the emphasis on program, not personality, is deliberate and effective. “It does matter a lot who you are,” said campaign strategist James Carville. But in the political climate of 1992, Carville insisted, what voters really want to know is a candidate’s plan for the future.

It also helps to have the political calendar on your side. Although Clinton and his aides discount any such advantage, the primary schedule could give him a chance to clearly establish himself as the candidate to beat.

After New Hampshire votes on Feb. 18, Clinton will be able to concentrate on the Georgia primary, which has been tentatively set for March 3. He not only brings his own regional appeal into that contest, but last week picked up the support of Georgia’s widely respected U.S. senator, Democrat Sam Nunn.

Clinton hopes to make a strong showing in New Hampshire, win in Georgia, rack up several victories on “Super Tuesday,” the March 10 slate of caucuses and primaries in Florida, Texas and nine other states, then triumph March 17 in Illinois, home state to his wife, Hillary, his campaign manager, David Wilhelm, and several key supporters.

A second advantage Clinton’s supporters count on is the candidate’s obvious gifts as a press-the-flesh politician.

Hours after Weidner heard Clinton speak in Columbus last week, Clinton’s small plane landed at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire in the midst of a heavy snowstorm. On the way to his hotel, he pulled over at a Dunkin’ Donuts for a post-midnight snack, and, while sleepy staff members watched, pulled up a chair next to two Portsmouth residents and spent 20 minutes discussing the local economy and the reasons for his presidential race.

“This is the way campaigning ought to be,” he told them.