Clinton Sounds Theme of Change, Calls Bush Divisive : Democrats: Brown stumps in Philadelphia, where he draws a comparison between environmental pollution and corruption in politics.

Bill Clinton took his campaign nearly within a stone’s throw of the White House on Sunday to declare that if elected President he would change the country, while George Bush would only divide it.

Addressing a rain-soaked rally in Lafayette Park at the end of a 14-block midday run, the Democratic candidate reminded the crowd how an earlier White House occupant, Abraham Lincoln, had warned 134 years earlier against a nation divided against itself.

“Over there,” Clinton said, pointing toward the White House, “they say, ‘Let’s keep the house divided and we’ll be reelected.’ ”

His rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., campaigned in Philadelphia, where he visited three black churches and a belated Earth Day rally. “You cannot have a good environment in an unjust society,” he told environmentalists, linking his calls to clean up politics with efforts to clean up the planet. “Don’t live in the rot and ruin of political corruption. Clean up America.”

Brown also vowed not to abandon his quest for the nomination, even if he does poorly in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. In fact, aides let it be known that Brown plans a “major” address today to reaffirm his intentions to stay in the race to the end. Brown has been plagued by questions about whether he will bow out if Pennsylvania proves a disappointment.

The speech is being written by Richard N. Goodwin, a longtime friend of Brown and a former speech writer for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Goodwin has been a major influence on Brown’s contention that money has corrupted politics. Goodwin highlighted the theme in his latest book, “Promises to Keep,” parts of which Brown used in his campaign announcement last October.

Clinton remained outwardly confident that he will be the Democrat challenging George Bush in November. At the rally in the park across the street from the White House, he ignored Brown but reasserted his claim that he is the genuine outsider of the 1992 campaign. Then he chastised Bush for, he said, using the word “change” 42 times in the last two days.

“In the past two days George Bush has had no word in his vocabulary but ‘change,’ ” said Clinton, who had puffed along Washington’s ceremonial boulevard in a black sweat shirt, black Spandex athletic pants and baggy red cotton shorts. “But we’ve had no change in the last three years.”

He said the nation “cannot afford to take one more election where we take no chances, we take no risks and we make it absolutely certain that we will continue our slide downhill.”

The rally was held nine days before the District of Columbia’s May 5 primary and on a weekend when Bush was away--at the presidential weekend retreat in Camp David, Md.

Although the rain was a bad break for the rally, Clinton insisted: “I run in the rain all the time. Some people would say I’ve been running in the rain for the past three months”--a reference to the criticism he has faced since the New Hampshire primary.

And Clinton obligingly posed for a herd of TV photographers, who overran the park’s well-tended beds of red tulips and blue hyacinths as they maneuvered to photograph the candidate against a background of the White House.

It was the front-runner’s second near-confrontation with Bush in three days. On Friday, the two men had genteelly jousted by satellite broadcasts that linked them from separate cities to a convention of Latino journalists in Albuquerque.

Earlier Sunday, Clinton returned to his themes of the need for an urban revival as he attended morning services at the Bible Way Temple, a church in downtown Washington.

In a 15-minute address that was also carried on a local radio station, Clinton spoke to the congregation of the sufferings of city residents.

“When a child born in Washington has less chance to live to be a year old than a child in Shanghai, China, we can do better,” he said. But he held out the promise of a better day, referring to “that line in Revelations when Jesus promised to wipe away all our tears.”

“The people should take the streets back,” said Clinton, who recited verses of Scripture as he stood amid a brightly robed choir and swelling bouquets of spring flowers.

Clinton finished the day campaigning in Pennsylvania.

For Brown, the Philadelphia Earth Day rally provided the first real enthusiasm of his campaign day, as more than 200 supporters carried placards and shouted slogans. Earlier, the former California governor visited three black churches in the city, where he drew only polite applause.

At the Deliverance Evangelistic Church, Brown attacked Clinton over Arkansas’ status as one of only two states in the nation without a state civil rights law. (Alabama is the other one. Clinton contends that he has supported such a bill but that the Legislature refused to pass it.)

Brown also told the congregation that the “bombed-out buildings” in American cities are worse than he has seen in Calcutta.

Brown bought advertising time on black radio stations over the weekend. But the black vote largely has gone to Clinton, despite Brown’s pledge to make civil rights leader Jesse Jackson his running mate. Jackson has neither accepted nor rejected the offer, which seemed to cost Brown votes in the New York primary April 7.

Brown spent the remainder of the day across the river in southern New Jersey. Asked by an interviewer in Camden how long he would continue his campaign, Brown said: “As long as it takes.”