Perot’s Abandonment Adds New Uncertainty : Campaign: Move sends Democrats and Republicans back to the drawing board. Both parties voice relief mixed with anxiety.

Maverick independent Ross Perot’s abrupt abandonment of his undeclared presidential candidacy Thursday created new uncertainty in an already erratic campaign, offering a measure of relief but also a heavy dose of anxiety for Democrats and Republicans alike.

“It’s back to the drawing boards for everyone,” Stuart Eizenstat, a veteran of the Jimmy Carter White House and now an adviser to Democratic standard-bearer Bill Clinton, said with a sigh as he trudged to the convention floor here to listen to Clinton’s acceptance speech.

By removing himself from contention, Perot ended the prospect for which Eizenstat and other strategists in both political parties had been laboring: the endless complexity of a three-way race among Clinton, Perot and President Bush, and beyond that the ultimate nightmare--an election thrown into the political swamps of the House of Representatives.

Yet if Perot’s departure put strategists back on the familiar ground of a traditional two-man race, it left them with a welter of other conundrums. Indeed, his departure made some of the challenges even thornier than before.

While it is far too early to be certain where Perot’s supporters finally will go and much will depend on the course of the campaign in the coming months, two things already seem clear:

* Perot’s departure offers Democrats what they consider a golden opportunity to capitalize on the near-universal unhappiness with present economic and social conditions and the widespread belief that major changes in national policy are needed.

* To capitalize on that opportunity, however, the Democrats must not only break the GOP’s well-established lock on electoral college votes in the South and Southwest but must successfully withstand what all agree will be a brutal assault on Clinton’s personal character and record.

In the immediate aftermath of Perot’s jarring withdrawal, Democratic and Republican planners offered conflicting claims as to which candidate would benefit and which would suffer more. And the only sure conclusion was that the ultimate net benefit would go to the candidate who proved able to take maximum advantage of the changed order of battle.

Still, Perot’s withdrawal affected the two candidates in different ways and presented them with different sets of challenges.

Republicans claimed to be pleased to return to the sort of two-man race that they are accustomed to winning. John Morgan, a GOP consultant brought to New York as part of a daily effort to counter the effusion of Democratic Convention rhetoric, pointed out that in winning the White House three straight times since 1980, his party carried 38 states with 408 electoral votes--138 more than the required majority--in all three campaigns.

In a two-way contest, said Bush campaign pollster Fred Steeper, “we know how to pick out our base states and our target states. We also know what demographic groups give us our biggest vote. We know where to go with a two-way race in terms of who should be supporting us.

“We’ve been having a heck of a time coming out with replacement models for a three-way race. This makes everybody more confident in terms of what states have to be targeted,” he said.

But the GOP high command must worry whether the tactics that produced victory for their party’s candidates in the last three elections will yield the same result this year. Shaken by a prolonged economic slump and disapproving of the incumbent President’s leadership in the White House, voters may react differently.

“The economy is off,” conceded veteran Republican consultant Eddie Mahe, sent here to coordinate the GOP counteroffensive against the Democratic Convention. “Nobody can argue that. But there are a lot of accomplishments and I would expect that at our convention we’ll do a good job and put out that record.”

Still, even Mahe’s enthusiasm was limited. While insisting that “we think our guy has a lot better shot than the other guy, because he has a better record,” Mahe said that “maybe the choice comes down to ‘Hold your nose, which one am I going to vote for?’ ”

Also trying to look on the bright side of things, a senior White House official said that the departure of Perot opens the way for the Bush team to woo the Texas tycoon’s conservative and moderate supporters. But he acknowledged that to make such an appeal effective the Bush campaign needs to offer a substantive incentive to potential Perot backers.

“We still need to have an agenda for the next four years,” the official said. “That’s still kind of a problem for us.”

And a ranking Bush aide described a mood of unease among White House advisers who had hoped Clinton and Perot might split the support of disenchanted voters. “Look, we’re 17 points down,” the aide said. “We’re going to be 20 points down next week, and we’re in total torpor.”

At Bush campaign headquarters just a few blocks from the White House, senior officials said that they felt a “sense of relief” after Perot withdrew from the race. But they said that Bush would have to move quickly if he is to gather Perot’s army of volunteers to his banner.

The strategists acknowledged that Perot supporters tended in large number to hold unfavorable opinions of Bush. But they also share many Republican values, the GOP strategists said, and that fact could enable Bush to break through their discontent.

“They’re kind of angry with Bush,” said Robert A. Mosbacher, the former commerce secretary who is general chairman of the Bush campaign, “but they don’t have a low opinion of Bush. They think he’s a good sound man of honesty and integrity but they think he hasn’t been paying attention to them. So our job is to reach out. You reconnect.”

As for the Democrats, they profess to be delighted with the exclusive rights to exploit the national mood of discontent.

“About two-thirds of the voters don’t want Bush as President,” says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, an adviser to Clinton’s running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore. Mellman cited polls showing widespread disapproval of the President’s performance and a high negative reaction to his leadership.

“Now they can all unite behind Clinton,” the Democratic pollster said.

It was a theme that Clinton’s top aides quickly settled on as part of their message of the day. “All these people are out there calling for nothing but change. We’re the change,” said Clinton communications director George Stephanopoulos.

Perot getting out of the race “clears a whole side of the field for us” and makes the campaign message much clearer, said Clinton campaign consultant James Carville.

Some Republicans agreed. “If Perot drops out, then instead of being able to split up 60% or 70% disaffected, you’ve got them all against you,” former Education Secretary William J. Bennett warned in an interview.

But given the lessons of the 1988 campaign, Democrats have to worry about how well their candidate, with his scarified character profile, can withstand the intense scrutiny and criticism to which the Bush campaign will subject him now that he is the sole challenger.

“In the short run, Bush gains,” Clinton adviser Eizenstat said. “Now he can focus his guns on us. He doesn’t have to fight a two-front war.”

“The Democrats are right in that if you have a large protest vote you only want one protest candidate,” Steeper said. “The problem they have is that there are still lingering doubts about Clinton’s character which make him not the right alternative for many people.”

Rather than delve into new allegations of scandal against the Arkansas governor, who was damaged in his campaign for the nomination by charges that he had been unfaithful to his wife and manipulated his draft status to avoid service in the Vietnam War, the Bush campaign plans to target his record as governor, finding flaws and inconsistencies that they will contend raise doubts about his character, as well as his ability to keep his substantive campaign promises.

They began this week by distributing a 13-page document called “Bill Clinton on the Issues,” and another seven-page compilation of Arkansas ratings compared to other states in various fields ranging from child care and civil rights to education and the environment.

“All you have to do is look at the record,” claimed the GOP’s Mahe. “Arkansas ranks between 45th and 50th on everything good and first and fifth on everything bad.

“We are going to kill him” with this material, he said. “We are going to chop off his legs.”

“The Bush-Quayle campaign is likely to be the most negative political organization ever organized in this country,” said Paul Tully, political director of the Democratic National Committee and the national party’s chief liaison officer to the Clinton campaign. “We expect them to throw everything but the kitchen sink” at Clinton.

Tully contended that such a negative assault could backfire because of “the disgust factor” among voters weary of campaign attacks. But he conceded that such a Bush barrage could interfere with Clinton’s attempt to get his message across.

In strategic terms, viewing the contest from the perspective of the 50 state battlegrounds, Perot’s departure appears to dim Democratic hopes of conquering traditional GOP strongholds because Perot will not be there to cut into the Republican vote.

Without Perot in the race, Bush strategists said that they expect the complicated calculus of a three-man race to be pared down to a more conventional electoral arithmetic.

Under those assumptions, Bush would regain a dominant position in the Southern border states, where the Perot candidacy was thought to offer Clinton a chance to break through the Republican lock.

At the same time, however, Bush was said by one senior adviser to face new obstacles in California and the Pacific Northwest, where the weak economy has added to voters’ animosity toward him.

That assessment was echoed by a senior Clinton adviser in an interview before Perot abandoned his presidential bid. “A three-way race makes it possible for us to sweep the South,” the official said, “whereas in a two-way race, it’s tougher, based on the recent voting patterns.”

Striving to put the best face on the changed situation, Democratic pollster Mellman said that the loss of opportunities in the South would be more than made up for by strengthened Democratic chances in the West, particularly California with its 54 electoral votes--the largest total of any state.

“If Perot was going to do well, he was going to do well in California and Oregon and Washington,” Mellman said. “If he was taking California and Oregon away from us and making Alabama and Mississippi available to us, I’d trade California for Alabama and Mississippi any day in the week.”

In California, Eileen Padberg, an Orange County political consultant who was involved in Bush’s 1988 campaign, said that she believes the Perot pullout “makes it tougher for President Bush and the Republican Party in California.”

“I think all that bodes badly for the President,” in a state where Bush never has been very popular, she said.

Mervin Field, director of the Field Poll and a veteran California political observer and analyst, said “it is the clear fact that Perot was just eating Bush’s lunch in suburban areas. So with Perot gone, Bush is helped in that regard.”

But Field noted that the Democratic opposition is now much stronger and the economy far worse than in 1988, when Bush carried California by only 3.5% over Michael S. Dukakis. “It’s not just the economy,” Field said. “It’s Bush himself and just a variety of things. Bush has really got to get it back together” to be able to win California.

A senior Bush aide said that new consideration is being given to revising a plan for the Republican National Convention that had emphasized the party’s conservative wing. That plan calls for former President Ronald Reagan to deliver the keynote address, with other major speeches by Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm.

“We’re going to have to open that big tent,” the senior Bush aide said.