‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : All Baby-Boom Ticket Hoping to Avert Generational Politics : Strategy: Clinton and Gore don’t want to seem threatening to younger voters, and they want to persuade their elders they are ready to take over.

In this sweltering convention city, the Big Chill hit aides to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton more powerfully than they expected Monday morning.

There on the covers of two national news magazines were headlines that portrayed the party’s about-to-be-annointed national ticket of Clinton and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore as the political arrival of the 77-million-strong baby-boom generation.

“Young Guns: The Generational Gamble,” cried Newsweek. “The Democrats’ New Generation,” shouted Time.

For many in the Clinton camp, that was not exactly the way they were hoping to begin the week. From the start of the campaign, Clinton and his advisers have been deeply ambivalent about the extent to which they should stress themes of generational change in his bid for the White House. They remain that way even now that the 45-year-old Clinton’s selection of Gore, 44, has created the first all baby-boom ticket.

“We’re not going to run on generational themes,” insists Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster.

Apparently, though, someone neglected to tell Gore.

Clinton strategists expected that Gore’s selection would generate some media speculation about generational transition. But the senator sent the issue into orbit last Thursday when he declared, in his first appearance at Clinton’s side: “Throughout American history each generation has passed on leadership to the next. That time has come again: the time for a new generation of leadership.”

One Clinton aide said Gore inserted that language himself into the remarks that were prepared for him. Many in the Clinton camp clearly aren’t eager to hear much more of it. Asked whether Gore would continue to emphasize generational transition, one senior Clinton adviser said curtly: “Not for long.”

Over the last decade, at least three distinct political arguments have been marketed under the heading of generational politics. In this campaign, Clinton has displayed no interest in the first, a passing interest in the second and a lasting attachment to the third.

* ‘60s Idealism: This first version of generational politics, the one Clinton has shown no affinity for, was aimed precisely at baby boomers, urging them to recapture the idealism they supposedly felt during that decade. That argument, as delivered in presidential campaigns by Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in 1984 and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 1988, excited many young political activists, but generated relatively little interest among baby boomers themselves, in part because polls show that three-fourths of the generation had no involvement in 1960s social protests.

* Fresh Leadership: This second kind of generational politics is the one Gore played: maintaining that the time had arrived to turn over power to a younger generation of leaders. In many respects that is a natural theme for Clinton, because the 22-year age difference between the Arkansas governor and President Bush is the largest such gap between two major party nominees in this century.

Moreover, many Democrats believe that the end of the Cold War has provided the perfect context for such an argument. “This is the first election after the Cold War and that creates a natural environment for change,” says attorney Theodore C. Sorensen, a speech writer for the original generational candidate, John F. Kennedy. “Bush and (independent Ross) Perot are part of a different generation--their experience is different and (rooted) in the Cold War.”

But, for now, Clinton strategists remain leery of pushing too hard on the case that time has passed by Bush’s generation. In part, they fear that such a call for generational succession will be heard as more narcissistic whining by the baby boomers--a group that many Americans, both older and younger, already consider self-centered and arrogant.

Instead of talking about their common generational experience, aides say, Clinton and Gore are more likely to stress energy, new ideas, change and vitality--concepts they believe to be attractive to voters of all ages. “We will talk about it in a way that people understand we’re offering a new generation of ideas and not a demographic fact,” says Mandy Grunwald, a Clinton media adviser.

Clinton advisers also fear that overly stressing the ticket’s baby-boom roots might make it easier for the GOP to shift the campaign debate toward the impact on American society of the 1960s cultural upheavals--a favorite Republican target. There are already signs that the GOP hopes to reprise that debate: In the same speech in which he condemned television character Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle, a baby boomer himself, largely blamed his generation for what he called a breakdown in “family values.”

Said Quayle: “When we were young, it was fashionable to declare war against traditional values. Indulgence and self-gratification seemed to have no consequences. Many of our generation glamorized casual sex and drug use, evaded responsibility and trashed authority.”

Those words appeared aimed at Clinton--who opposed the Vietnam War, sought to avoid the draft, acknowledged experimenting with marijuana and has faced accusations of extramarital affairs. But with Gore presenting a much more straight-laced image--and his wife, Mary Elizabeth (Tipper), known for her crusade to place warning labels on rock music containing sexually explicit, drug-promoting or violent lyrics--one senior Republican strategist said Monday it may be more difficult to paint the Democratic ticket as a threat to “traditional values.”

* Parenthood: Clinton has long attempted to insulate himself from such cultural attacks partly through the one generational theme he has used.

From the start, Clinton has addressed baby boomers not as aging protesters eager to recapture their youth, but as parents worried about their children. “I refuse to stand by and let our children become part of the first generation to do worse than their parents,” he often says.

To William Strauss, co-author of the book “Generations,” a study of generational succession in American history, that theme offers Clinton and Gore their best chance of reaching baby boomers.

“You play generational politics by appealing to the interests of children, not to the interests of baby boomers themselves,” he says.

For that reason, many Clinton advisers believe nothing either candidate says can be as powerful a generational statement as the striking visual image of both men standing with their families.

Strauss believes that the baby-boom ticket’s fate may be settled less by their contemporaries than by two other generations. One crucial question for the Democrats, he maintains, is whether “the (older) generation of World War II veterans can say now it’s time for our children to take over.”

Equally important, he says, is whether younger voters will be guided by the sense of being squeezed by baby boomers both culturally and in the job market--or their belief that the nation’s economic course is constricting their future.

“The pluses in nominating a young ticket are that it’s easier to emphasize the theme of change, and young suburban families may see themselves reflected in these young men,” says Larry Hugick, a Gallup Poll vice president. “The negative will be if voters decide they don’t want to trust these young guys with power.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this story.