NEWS ANALYSIS : AFTER THE...

The explosion of racial tensions in Los Angeles has shaken the national political landscape, reviving memories of the 1960s violence that helped drive the Democrats from the White House and inflicted enduring damage on the party’s biracial coalition.

But for all its roots in the past, the crisis triggered by the verdicts in the beating of Rodney G. King confront leaders of both parties with altered circumstances and fresh challenges. Here are the important changes that political leaders in both major parties and at every level of government must reckon with:

* GOP incumbency: The most obvious difference between then and now is that Republicans -- not Democrats -- occupy the Oval Office, and have been there for 19 of the last 23 years. As President Bush signaled by his arrival Wednesday night at the scene of last week’s violence, it is the GOP that must bear much of the responsibility not only for restoring order but also, many believe, for avoiding future violence.

“Presidents are held responsible for the state of things,” said John Petrocik, a UCLA political scientist and a Republican polling consultant. “The failure to do something is a liability whether the people who are the direct beneficiaries of what you do are normally part of your constituency or of somebody else’s.”

* Democratic change: While Republican incumbent Bush ponders what course to follow, his presumptive Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, is already pushing a package of remedies tempered by the setbacks and frustrations inflicted on the party and the civil rights movement during the last two decades. By and large, Clinton seeks to steer away from the heavy funding that typifies traditional Democratic activism, instead placing more stress on the responsibilities of the individual citizen to improve his or her own lot in life.

“We must honestly say, here is what political leaders should do and here is what people should do,” Clinton said last week in a major address on race and the role of government at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “And unless we close the gap between what leaders must do and understand what only people can do, we will go on and on in frustration after frustration.”

* Third force: Still another new factor in 1992 is the expected presence of a third presidential candidate, Texas billionaire Ross Perot. If Perot sometimes seems slow to provide detailed solutions to national problems, he certainly seems quick to demand action.

“If I were home watching that (the Los Angeles riots), I’d head for the airport,” he said Sunday. “And on the way to the airport I’d call the attorney general and tell him to file a federal case (against the police officers involved in the King case).”

Though Perot targeted his criticism at Bush’s handling of the riots, most polls have shown that his candidacy would take more votes away from Clinton than from the President.

In some ways the passage of time has made it harder for any presidential candidate to ease racial tensions and bring new hope and vitality to the beleaguered cities. Though individual blacks have made notable progress due to changes in laws and customs and their own efforts, overall racial isolation and antagonism seem to have intensified, and disagreement about solutions has increased.

Still, as Republican consultant David Keene notes: “Most Americans would agree that there is something about the way our society is trying to integrate all its members that isn’t working.”

One point on which most analysts agree is that despite the political perils surrounding racial relations, the problems are so significant that each candidate must at least attempt to address them.

As chief executive, Bush had the best opportunity to define the debate after the riots. But instead of a clarion call, his Administration gave mixed signals.

Last weekend, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, displaying compassion that would have done credit to the late Hubert Humphrey, pleaded for action on a familiar agenda of proposals to revive the cities by circumventing traditional bureaucratic agencies and offering incentives to business and “empowerment” to individuals. Topping the list is a proposal to stimulate “urban enterprise” by giving tax breaks to inner-city investors.

“It’s a basic universal fact,” Kemp said, “that where people are without access to hope, if they just have the shirt on their back, it undermines respect for the law, it undermines respect for property.”

But soon afterward, the Administration’s tone abruptly hardened. White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater laid blame for the violence on failed social welfare programs of the 1960s and 1970s.

The White House quickly backed off on that response, but passed word to reporters that the Administration’s reaction would be dominated by emphasis on law and order.

It is easy to understand why the President would be tempted by such a strategy. To promote the empowerment agenda would probably stir bureaucratic squabbles within the Administration and provoke resistance from Capitol Hill Democrats suspicious of the President’s motives and determined to protect existing programs for cities and the poor.

Bush campaign strategists believe the idea of aiding cities has limited appeal.

“The public wants some effort,” said Bush pollster Fred Steeper. “The inner cities are becoming a threat. But from a polling point of view, it’s not one of the top five issues in the country. People care. But there are other things they care more about.”

Besides, no one can be sure whether these new remedies, however well intentioned, would work any better than the nostrums of the past.

Still, even within Bush’s political household, some argued that however risky new solutions might be, they amounted to a gamble Bush could not afford to pass up.

“If you start with the goal of everybody in this country having a decent opportunity, physical security and good life prospects, then it’s obvious that we as a society have failed,” said James Pinkerton, the former deputy White House domestic policy chief who is currently the issues counselor to the reelection campaign. “So, therefore, that forces us to start rethinking what we’re doing.”

“It is common sense to take a method and try it,” Pinkerton said, quoting Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.”

Conservatives outside the Administration see public concern stirred by the riots as an opportunity for Bush to make his mark on the domestic front. “With the end of the Cold War, people are becoming impatient about what needs to be done on domestic policy,” said Jeff Bell, a former Reagan and Kemp campaign aide and author of the new book “Populism and Elitism,” which deals with contemporary politics. “This is an Administration that needs to be for something besides law and order.”

Widely respected Republican consultant Eddie Mahe argues that although pushing the Kemp proposals may not help Bush win this election, it would help him create a mandate for action in a second Bush term.

“What you can do in five months (before the election) is not much,” Mahe said. “But if in fact you are positioning yourself as the governing party of the country, within the country there are something called cities. And even though the Democrats have run them for 50 years, you have to be concerned about them and the kind of policies it’s going to take to get them back on line.”

As vexing as are the political conundrums facing Bush, the problems confronting Clinton and his Democrats are at least as formidable. Most important, they must find a way to resolve the grievances of their most reliable constituency, African-Americans, while winning back the middle-class white voters whose defection to the GOP sealed the doom of the Democrats in five of the last six presidential elections.

This has been been the fundamental Democratic problem all along, but many analysts believe it has been exacerbated by the violence in Los Angeles and elsewhere. “It’s going to lead to more polarization,” pollster Daniel Yankelovich said.

If Clinton is “pushed by political pressures into promising economic programs targeted to blacks, he’s going to be in trouble,” Yankelovich said. “He will fall back into a major political trap.”

Clinton seemed well aware of that peril in his address on race to the Democratic Leadership Council. While repeating pledges to work for improved health care and expanded preschool training, he offered no new programs and stressed the need for greater discipline by individuals and more responsibility by his party.

“We Democrats have also let the American people down” by resisting welfare reform, continuing to fund federal programs that do not accomplish their objectives and failing to pay sufficient attention to the victims of crime, Clinton said.

The problem with Democrats in the past, said Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, who succeeded Clinton as chairman of the Leadership Council, is that aid to African-Americans and to cities was “perceived as just another program for minorities.”

“Bill Clinton talks about responsibility as well, and making welfare temporary, that’s a different angle,” Breaux said.

But although the new centrist Democratic approach may help the party achieve the Leadership Council’s goal of bringing back white voters, some skeptics contend that it will cost the support of black voters.

“Philosophy is one thing, but elections are a game with numbers,” said Ronald Walters, Howard University political scientist and an adviser to the 1984 and 1988 Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns.

Blacks, other minorities and white liberals make up about a third or more of the voting base of the Democratic Party, Walters calculates. Noting the low black turnout in this year’s presidential primaries, he said, “What we’re about to see tested is whether the Democratic Party can win an election without them or without a good group of them showing up as they compete for what is essentially the George Bush, Ronald Reagan constituency.”

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.