Clinton Must Shift Focus of Public Eye, Analysts Say : Politics: Candidate’s main task is to blunt character issue and sharpen attack on Bush, observers contend.

As Bill Clinton resumes his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination after a week of rest and vocal recuperation, experienced political operatives from both parties say he faces a crucial window of time in which to try to start his campaign afresh and reduce his serious credibility problem with voters.

The strategists offer a surprising degree of unanimity on the question of how the Arkansas governor should address the problem: Change the subject.

“That sounds harder to do than it actually is,” said longtime Republican strategist John Sears.

Although voter distrust of Clinton is serious, those sorts of doubts can be overcome if a candidate presents voters with some reason to set their worries aside, Sears said. “Nothing’s hopeless,” he added. “I originally worked for Richard Nixon.”

Democratic strategist Greg Schneiders offered a similar view. “Clinton needs to change the focus of attention and get it off him and his character and onto the failings of the Bush Administration,” he said.

Nixon, for example, had a long-established reputation as “Tricky Dick,” Sears said, but his advisers succeeded in focusing attention on his plans for the country rather than on his personal weaknesses.

Some analysts have suggested that Clinton find some highly public forum to directly address the questions about his character. Schneiders and others reject that idea, as do Clinton’s own strategists. “He needs to change the subject, not dwell on the subject,” Schneiders said.

Beginning today, with a speech in Philadelphia on economic policy, Clinton plans to begin trying to do that. The speech will try to “draw a sharp contrast between his vision of the economy and (President) Bush’s,” said Clinton policy director Bruce Reed.

Clinton advisers say they hope to highlight what they see as a fundamental choice between a President who believes government should trust business and leave the economy alone and a challenger who believes that an activist government can improve the economy.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Democratic front-runner plans to deliver additional speeches on education and the environment. After that, speeches on crime, restructuring government and trade policy are in the works.

“The basic plan is to refocus the campaign on the real issues that are affecting real people,” said deputy campaign manager George Stephanopoulos. “The voters have had too much of the campaign being about personalities.”

Bush aides, of course, will resist any attempt to shift the focus. At a breakfast with reporters Wednesday morning, for example, Republican Party Chairman Richard N. Bond referred half a dozen times to Clinton as the “prince of sleaze”--each time insisting that he was not adopting the characterization himself but merely repeating a charge leveled by Clinton’s Democratic rival, former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

But Clinton aides point to one key moment during the New York primary to illustrate how they hope voters will respond. The week before the New York vote, Clinton appeared on the Phil Donahue TV show, where Donahue repeatedly grilled him on his alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers.

After nearly 30 minutes of questioning, Donahue turned to his audience and 25-year-old Melissa Roth, a Republican, raised her hand from her back-row seat. “I think . . . given the pathetic state of most of the United States at this point--Medicare, education, everything else--I can’t believe you spent half an hour of air time attacking this man’s character,” Roth nearly shouted at the host.

The studio audience erupted in applause.

“People are desperate to have the election focus on their problems,” said Clinton adviser Paul Begala.

Added a longtime Democratic operative: “You can’t deal with the negatives, per se”--in part because the accusations against Clinton are too many, too varied and, in most cases, too complicated to handle in a forum like a televised speech. But by giving voters some different information about Clinton to think about--information about what he would try to do if elected, “you can make the negatives less important.”

Even Clinton’s own advisers concede that they face a difficult task. Candidates in the past have overcome high negative ratings--37% of voters had an unfavorable view of Bush at this point four years ago, for example. Bush responded in large part by going on the attack against Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis. In the end, Bush’s negative ratings declined only slightly--but Dukakis’ soared.

Clinton used that strategy effectively in New York by attacking Brown, but he cannot follow that path against Bush, strategists say--in part because voters resist direct attacks against the character of a sitting President. Moreover, Clinton’s own negative ratings have reached extremely high levels, and they focus on attributes--honesty, integrity, trust--that are central to the choice voters make in picking a President.

But the same polls that illustrate Clinton’s problems also show his remaining opportunity.

A Gallup Poll released Wednesday, for example, showed that 47% of registered voters view Clinton unfavorably, versus 34% who viewed him favorably. A Times Poll late last month found similar results.

Nonetheless, in both polls, Clinton ran only a few points behind Bush when people were asked which candidate they would vote for if the election were held today. Wednesday’s Gallup Poll showed Bush with a 48%-41% edge among registered voters--a lead within the poll’s margin of error, plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Gallup asked the same question in March and found a larger lead for Bush. In the intervening weeks, the Democratic race has moved toward closure and Bush’s own job-approval ratings have dropped again. Only 39% of voters surveyed approve of Bush’s job performance, and 54% disapprove.

That approval score matches the rating President Jimmy Carter received in April, 1980. At the time, he also held a small lead over Ronald Reagan in Gallup’s survey. But that did not help Carter in November, when he lost the general election.

The numbers present a conundrum to pollsters and a challenge to strategists. “If Bill Clinton with an unfavorable rating this high can hold Bush to a single-digit lead, is that good or bad?” asked Times Poll director John Brennan.

The hope in the Clinton camp is that their candidate’s negative ratings have gone about as high as they can go and that they now can begin to build up a more positive view.

In effect, Clinton’s strategy is a return to that of last fall, when he launched his campaign with a well-received series of policy speeches in Washington, several of which challenged his party’s long-held orthodoxies on domestic and foreign policy.

Gradually, however, as he moved through the primary process, Clinton moved toward less politically risky fare. Even top aides concede that his effort lost much of its message in the struggle to stay afloat.

“Before, we had to engage tactically,” said one senior Clinton adviser. At this point, “we don’t have many tactical battles left to fight.”

Now, having survived the primaries with the nomination in reach but his electability in doubt, Clinton hopes to move back to the approach that boosted him to the top of the Democratic field in the first place.