NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Tries to Shift Focus of Spotlight : Politics: He wants to move debate away from questions about his character and toward an examination of Tsongas’ policies.

As he moves toward two crucial rounds of balloting this Tuesday and next, a single imperative drives Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign--wrenching the debate away from his character and toward Paul E. Tsongas’ policies.

For Clinton--the onetime front-runner in the Democratic race and still the candidate most party professionals expect to win the nomination--the stakes riding on his ability to make that shift are immense.

Clinton and his advisers have long counted on the next eight days as the period in which he would establish himself as the commanding favorite for the nomination. And polls still show he has a chance of winning two of Tuesday’s key primary states, starting with Georgia--where he is heavily favored--and either Maryland or Colorado, where he has been running within possible striking distance of Tsongas.

Next week, his money and organization remain a strong advantage in the mainly Southern primaries of “Super Tuesday.”

But the same polls hold an ominous warning for the Arkansas governor. Tsongas, with his message of economic sacrifice and his image as a politician willing to tell hard truths, has established himself among upper-income, white-collar professionals, who turn out in large numbers in many Democratic primaries.

More importantly, with other candidates fading, Tsongas appears to have succeeded in positioning himself as the prime alternative for voters with questions about whether Clinton has the proper character to be President.

If Clinton cannot move the debate away from those questions--as he tried to do in three successive candidate forums over the past weekend--he faces a long, grueling struggle for the nomination. And, although Clinton’s organizational efforts might win the contest, the effort could leave his camp drained for the general election.

The problem for Clinton goes deeper than the oft-mentioned unsubstantiated allegations of marital infidelity or the questions about his draft status during the Vietnam War. Both of those issues have damaged his campaign, but they have done so largely by feeding an overall sense many voters seem to have that Clinton cannot be fully trusted, that he deserves the nickname long leveled at him by Arkansas opponents: “Slick Willie.”

Aides concede that Clinton has deepened that problem by a tendency to over-explain himself, reflecting an insistence that if he could only talk to people long enough, he could convince them of the correctness of his position.

Clinton campaign strategist James Carville jokes that his candidate is the sort who, when asked the time of day, feels compelled to give the history of the Swiss town where his watch was made. That trait gives Clinton admirable strength in winning policy arguments, but even some of his backers have seen it as a key weakness as he has tried to extricate himself from weeks of unfavorable publicity. His long-winded answers, they say, can give the impression he is avoiding a straightforward answer.

Tsongas has become the perfect foil for those foibles. In contrast to Clinton, “Tsongas has the demeanor of an honest and genuine guy,” said one of Clinton’s longtime friends. And with his image as a political outsider, the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts has emerged as Clinton’s antithesis.

Clinton, says an aide, must keep the campaign from developing into a contest between “Slick Willie and St. Paul.” That is a contest Clinton, for all his organizational muscle and financial power, would have great difficulty winning.

Clinton strategists say they remain convinced that they can win a different race--one that pits Clinton, the five-term governor, against Tsongas, the corporate lawyer and lobbyist. They are now bending all their efforts to cast the contest in that light.

“It’s going to end up a two-horse race, and we have to get Democrats to focus on the differences here,” said Mickey Kantor, chairman of Clinton’s campaign executive committee. “If you just focus on Tsongas as a nice person with some new ideas, it’s a problem.”

Clinton strategists say they believe that Tsongas cannot win the party’s nomination on the strength of his platform--an amalgam of liberal positions on social issues and conservative positions on economics that appeals to upper-income professionals but flies against the beliefs of many key Democratic constituencies.

Referring to the Maine caucuses and the South Dakota primary, two contests in which Clinton’s support fell below expectations, an adviser to the Arkansas governor said: “What we saw in Maine and South Dakota is that the undecideds were not breaking our way. We have to remind the potential Tsongas constituency of why they’re Democrats.”

Tsongas strategists, of course, dispute Clinton’s central premise.

“People are looking for straight answers,” said Tsongas spokesman David Eichenbaum. “Paul offers honest leadership, no gimmicks, no giveaways, and people find that refreshing.” Tsongas’ message, Eichenbaum insisted, “resonates with a broad spectrum” of voters.

Exit polls conducted by The Times and other news organizations during the New Hampshire primary challenge that later assertion. Tsongas’ appeal so far has been primarily to upper-income, white-collar voters. He has yet to demonstrate a strong appeal to blacks, to blue-collar workers or to lower-income voters in general--all key Democratic constituencies.

Nonetheless, in comparison to Clinton’s need to change the terms of the debate, Tsongas faces a far easier task--simply repeating the lines that have worked for him so far and chiding Clinton and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey--the one other candidate Democratic leaders believe could break out of the pack--for “negative campaigning.”

If Tsongas continues to do well, some of Clinton’s advisers concede that they could be facing a war of attrition, rather than the quick battle they had hoped for.

Clinton strategists say they believe their campaign is better placed than either Tsongas’ or Kerrey’s to fight that sort of war. In a drawn-out battle for convention delegates, “I wouldn’t switch positions with any of the others,” Kantor said. “We’ve got infrastructure and money and organization everywhere.”

But as past campaigns have demonstrated, those sorts of advantages can be transitory. Political support is “like political money,” Eichenbaum said. “When you go on a roll, it starts to build.”