NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton-Gore Ticket Links Southern Brothers in Arms : Democrats: For the bookend running mates, their race to November runs solidly through the white South, bypassing blacks and liberals.

Bill Clinton’s choice of philosophical soul mate and geographical neighbor Albert Gore Jr. as a running mate reveals much about the course the Arkansas governor plans to take to the White House.

The striking aspect of the Tennessee senator’s selection is that it directly contravenes the thinking of many Democrats who believed that Ross Perot’s likely independent candidacy would offer Clinton a chance to formulate a winning Southern strategy.

With Perot and incumbent Republican George Bush splitting most of the white vote in the normally rock-ribbed Republican South, they reasoned, Clinton could reap a rich harvest of electoral votes in Dixie by choosing a black or a white liberal who could boost black turnout--not only in the South, but in some key Northern states as well.

Instead, Clinton is relying on a different Southern strategy. His choice of another Southern white moderate like himself seems aimed at attracting Southern whites.

As for blacks, he seems to calculate that their traditional party loyalty will be enough to get them to the polls--and that they have nowhere to go but the Democratic Party.

That calculation carries an inherent--and risky--assumption: that Clinton can be competitive with Southern whites. Recent polls have not been encouraging. And right now, said Merle Black, Emory University’s highly regarded specialist in Southern politics, “I wouldn’t give him any state in the South. The only way he could win in the South would be for the white vote to be so evenly split among the other two candidates that he could win with a plurality.”

The strategy “could result in a debacle,” veteran Democratic strategist Ted Van Dyk warned--particularly if Perot’s candidacy should fade. In that event, most of Perot’s supporters would return to their most recent home in the GOP, many Democrats fear.

“We need Perot to stay strong,” conceded one Clinton aide who preferred not to be identified.

But Gore’s selection was lauded by many who regard the Tennessee senator as safe and sound, someone who at the least will do Clinton no harm.

“It will be widely acknowledged that he has presidential stature and one can picture him sitting in the Oval Office,” said Brookings Institution fellow Tom Mann, himself a Democratic loyalist. Mann cited Gore’s service in the House and Senate and his unsuccessful 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But the announcement was bound to disappoint some liberals.

“I think a lot depends on the vice president,” one liberal Northern senator and strong Clinton supporter said a few days before Clinton made his choice known. “That obviously will be a loud signal” of whether Clinton intends to energize the traditional Democratic base.

This senator’s first choice for running mate was New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, but he also thought Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania had potential to stir enthusiasm among blacks, union members and other liberal activists. “But if he picks someone like Al Gore, forget it.”

Clinton clearly was operating from a different perspective, drawing on his background as a five-term governor of Arkansas and former head of the Democratic Leadership Council, which was set up eight years ago to push the party toward the center and win back white middle-class voters.

“I think he’s counting on black turnout being a self-generating phenomenon,” said David Bositis, senior research analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank specializing in black politics.

Although Gore has a respectable record on civil rights, he has rarely been in the forefront on that issue. And his 1988 presidential candidacy pitted him against the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The conflict became racially polarized at times, particularly in the bitterly fought New York primary.

At any rate, Clinton’s strategic approach to the South seems consistent with the overall thrust of his candidacy, as some analysts see it. In choosing Gore, “Clinton is responding to the image problem of the Democratic Party, that it is too beholden to special interest groups, particularly blacks,” said Ron Walters, Howard University political scientist and an adviser to Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.

Recent poll results suggest that Clinton will have serious problems in making his Southern strategy work. An Atlanta Constitution survey taken June 21-24 in 12 Southern states showed Bush ahead with 39% to Clinton’s 29% and Perot’s 27%. In the survey of 747 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, Clinton got only 22% of the white vote, compared with 44% for Bush and 30% for Perot.

Although those figures could change, they raise the question of whether Gore’s presence is enough.

Clinton’s choice of Gore “amounts to an admission that he can’t do it himself,” said Black of Emory University. “Clinton needs a big black turnout and he needs about a third of the white vote”--or more than 10 percentage points above his support in the Constitution poll--Black calculates.

Getting the black support he needs will not be easy. Although Clinton easily captured the majority of the blacks who participated in Democratic primaries, turnout was low almost everywhere.

And recent polls raise questions about blacks’ enthusiasm. Although the Constitution poll showed Clinton getting 66% of the black vote, Bush got 14% and Perot 13%, a combined figure that is nearly three times the level of black support for Republican presidential candidates in recent presidential elections.

Another national poll of blacks gave Clinton just 43%--less than half of those interviewed. “The way I would read this if I were Bill Clinton and his advisers,” Bositis said, “is that there was a lot of work that still needed to be done among black voters.”