‘New Democrat’ Clinton Still Courting Old-Liners : Politics: Although seeking to break party stereotypes, he’s embraced by traditional backers.

As he enters the final eight weeks of the presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton is narrowly treading his way between two disparate political necessities.

Simultaneously, he is courting the old-line party activists whose ground support he desperately needs while seeking still to be seen as a new kind of Democrat.

It is on the latter point that he has staked his candidacy. But for all of his postulating that he breaks the old stereotypes for a Democratic presidential nominee, Clinton has in recent days strongly associated himself with the party’s traditional image.

On Thursday, he basked in the embrace of the AFL-CIO, whose 13 million-plus members represent a potentially tremendous resource for Clinton but whose political profile leans determinedly liberal.

A day later, the Sierra Club awarded him their second-ever presidential endorsement. The first went to Walter F. Mondale, whose 1984 presidential campaign did not survive his blunt assessment that taxes would have to be raised.

Clinton insisted Saturday that he can appeal to liberal linchpins and still be seen by voters as traveling a different ideological road than past Democrats. And the Arkansas governor indicated that in the near future he will more sharply define his differences with traditional Democratic thinking.

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“In the coming weeks, there will be lots of . . . examples about how we’re going beyond the old Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative gridlock to create a third way--new policies that will move this country forward,” he said as he boarded an airplane in Little Rock to travel here.

Clinton tried briefly to define himself along those lines in Columbia as he spoke to a crowd of several thousand people gathered on the lawn of the state Capitol. In the process, he sought to defuse Republican efforts to depict him as just another “tax-and-spend” Democrat by using President Bush’s own record against him.

Clinton criticized Bush for increasing the White House budget by 23% in 1990-91, saying: “I, the Democrat, have proposed a 25% decrease in the expenses of the White House staff. They’re the ones that are increasing big government in Washington. Give us a chance to get ahold of it.”

Later in his speech, he pointedly added, “I don’t want to go back to the past.”

Despite such comments, perhaps the most different thing this Democrat did on Saturday--compared to his party’s recent nominees--was to show up in South Carolina at all, campaigning in September in a state where Republicans have won five of the last six presidential campaigns and where Bush swamped his 1988 foe, Michael S. Dukakis, by winning more than 60% of the vote.

Strategically, Clinton’s stop was part of his campaign’s effort to force the Republicans to pay more attention to states they previously could take for granted.

Before Saturday, Clinton’s campaigning in recent days has been far more traditional, and his pitches for a new approach to solving the problems of America have been more restrained--at least in part because of the political power asserted by the groups who have come into his campaign’s fold.

Clinton has long argued that labor and management have to work together to chart a new course. But before the AFL-CIO last week, there was little suggestion from him that the unions had better change their ways.

The only reference to a new order in the nation’s workplaces was oblique and brief, occurring when Clinton urged his labor audience to help him convince others that American voters need to “seize new ideas instead of things we know won’t work.”

He added that “tax-and-spend” policies of the past need to be rejected in favor of initiative that stress “invest and grow.”

The rest of his speech, however, was reserved for an attack on Bush for failing to assist the middle class.

Courtship like that can be risky, leaving Clinton more vulnerable to Bush’s attempts to pigeonhole him with Mondale and Dukakis.

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Ultimately, it will come down to how voters see the Democratic nominee. While Bush criticizes Clinton as a candidate who will surely raise taxes, Clinton rarely utters the word.

Instead, his programs are ones which “invest” in America, the candidate says, easing around the notion that government revenues will have to be raised to fund many of them.

So far, the programs which have allowed Republicans to tar past Democrats as tax-and-spenders appear to be helping Clinton. His proposal for a national health insurance plan--despite coming under increasing fire from Bush--regularly wins Clinton enthusiastic applause from campaign crowds.

Another area in which Clinton proposes far greater government involvement is in education. He is pushing a loan program that would allow Americans to attend college and repay the debt either with future earnings or through participation in community service programs. Clinton also has a separate plan for an apprenticeship and job training program that would be funded by businesses.

Each proposal, at virtually every Clinton appearance, wins loud support despite the implication that they would exact a large price.

Clinton, answering questions in Little Rock on Saturday, indicated that he believes voters attracted by the centrist image he spotlighted early in the campaign year will not be put off by his association with more liberal voter groups.

Referring to the Sierra Club endorsement, he said his argument that environmental protection can be good for the economy separates him from Democrats who have courted the group in the past, he said.

“Our position is if we do it right, it is almost always a question of promoting new jobs as well as protecting the environment. So that’s a different kind of Democrat.”