Spirit Buoyed, Clinton on N.H. Campaign Trail : Candidate: He is encouraged by expressions of support despite the pressure of alleged adultery scandal.

There seemed to be an extra quiver of emotion in Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s voice as he greeted supporters who gathered for a noon rally here Wednesday.

“Thank you for being here,” he told one man who welcomed him, his handshake lasting a beat longer than usual. “Thank you.”

Encased in a seething scrum of reporters, Clinton returned to New Hampshire on Wednesday for the first time since he and his wife, Hillary, appeared on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” last weekend to discuss the unsubstantiated allegations of marital infidelity that have buffeted his campaign.

To an extraordinary degree, Clinton has veiled his emotions over the last week while facing questions as intimate as any ever posed to an American politician. But in such brief exchanges as that on the way to the podium here, he has revealed his awareness of just how much this wrenching week will mean to the ambitions he has nurtured for a lifetime.

“Look at the passion he displayed this morning,” said one senior campaign official. “The fact that people are still supporting him gives him a sense that he has to do this (run for President) . . . I think it has really affected him.”

Just as on his frantic two-day trip through the South earlier this week, Clinton showed no signs of being distracted or disheartened by the controversy. On a bright, unseasonably mild day, he briskly lashed President Bush’s State of the Union address for failing to take “responsibility” for the nation’s problems.

“The thing that bothered me most about the President’s speech is, so help me, I believe that he still doesn’t get it,” Clinton told the crowd of 150 who gathered outside a five-and-dime store scheduled to close today after more than 50 years.

“This is a big, big problem,” he said, pounding a fist into his hand. “We have been losing our growth rates to other countries for more than a decade. You can’t play around with this. We’ve got to have world-class education, world-class health care, a world-class economic program.”

Clinton found substantial signs of encouragement here. Quick polls taken earlier this week showed virtually no erosion of the support that has made him the apparent front-runner in the state’s pivotal Feb. 18 primary. Two surveys showed him with the support of at least 30% of the likely Democratic electorate.

And, as in the South, there was no evidence of political leaders’ backing away from him; while Clinton was unveiling extensive committees of supporters in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana on Monday and Tuesday, his campaign office here was announcing endorsements from former party chairman J. Joseph Grandmaison and former Rep. Norm D’Amours.

Perhaps most important, after two days of bombarding Clinton with questions about the allegations contained in the Star, a supermarket tabloid, even local television reporters--his most relentless inquisitors through the long days in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana--began to shift their focus Wednesday toward his case against the President.

When reporters briefly tried to raise New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo’s testy reaction to critical remarks Clinton allegedly made in conversations recorded by Gennifer Flowers, Clinton cut them off with a firm no-further-comment. Flowers, who sold her story to the Star, played excerpts of the tapes at a press conference Monday. On Tuesday Clinton apologized to Cuomo for the remarks without admitting that they were his. The comment implied that the New York governor acts like a Mafioso.

Nor did Clinton bite when reporters asked him to respond to a charge from one of his Democratic competitors, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, that his apology “betrays a lack of understanding of the insensitivity of the things he said.”

Clinton’s apology carried a caveat: “If the remarks on the tape left anyone with the impression that I was disrespectful to either Gov. Cuomo or Italian-Americans, then I deeply regret it.”

“What do you mean if?” Cuomo replied Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Clinton sought to move on. “I don’t want to comment on anything anybody else said,” he told reporters who clustered around him outside a Hampton fishing cooperative, where he ate some local sea urchins. “Gov. Cuomo said as far as he was concerned it is over; and as far as I am concerned it’s over, too.”

Many of the New Hampshire voters who watched Clinton on Wednesday shared his eagerness to shift the campaign’s focus away from his personal life.

“If you’re asking me to decide between what he does in the privacy of his life and the issues in my life--like paying the mortgage--I don’t care what he does,” said Jeanne McInnes of Portsmouth.

Added Rita Mullis of Newbury: “My sense is the media are quite disgusting, and if you carry on in this fashion you’ll get only mediocre people willing to come forward.”

And yet some voters--though hesitant and conflicted--expressed concerns. No one appeared eager to know more about Clinton’s personal life, but some seemed uncertain how to react to what they already know.