Clinton Is Making Sure It’s His Message That Gets Out : Campaign: He sticks to a well-choreographed regime. Still, Republicans accuse him of waffling.

Bill Clinton came to the back of his campaign plane the other night and demonstrated his political strategy: He took deliberate, heel-to-toe steps down the aisle.

“Putting one foot in front of the other,” the Democratic presidential nominee told reporters.

He is indeed. Since the formal Labor Day kickoff of the campaign, Clinton has hewed to a well-choreographed and disciplined plan: Put one foot in front of the other and don’t trip yourself up.

So on Tuesday, Clinton promoted his manufacturing strategy in Connecticut. On Wednesday, he pressed his welfare reform proposal in Georgia. On Friday, in Indiana, he issued a call for a national commitment to community service. On Saturday, he talked about family values in Washington, D.C., and Virginia.

On most days, there has been little to compete with the focus Clinton’s campaign seeks. The candidate, usually talkative, has taken to walking past reporters without even a glance, much less an answer to a question that might subvert the desired message of the day.

Even when he came to the back of his campaign plane to talk to reporters, Clinton refused to take any questions of substance. He preferred to discuss where he met his wife and how he hopes one day to build a home.

Yet in the same week he was pressing his policy proposals, Clinton also refused to take firm positions on three issues of pressing interest to various voting blocs: the North American Free Trade Agreement, a bill to raise fuel-efficiency standards and the proposed sale of F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

Over time, that positioning could play directly into a Republican strategy to portray Clinton as a candidate who waffles on issues to avoid offending voters.

Last week, for example, President Bush took Clinton to task for appearing last year to take positions on both sides of the decision to use military force against Iraq.

For Bush and his surrogates, the waffling argument is part of a larger attack on Clinton’s credibility. Last week they spent much of their time criticizing Clinton’s explanations of his draft record.

Clinton campaign officials brush aside the notion that the Arkansas governor will face political fallout if he does not come to a quick decision about the pressing issues.

“These are not simple issues,” said Avis Lavelle, Clinton’s spokeswoman. “For political expediency, you can rush to judgment. But if you’re talking about thoughtful, deliberative government, you have to analyze (the details).”

Lavelle acknowledged that it is “possible” that Clinton will suffer the barbs of the Republicans because of his delays, but she said Bush could also come under fire.

“They could be vulnerable to charges that they rushed to close NAFTA (the free trade agreement) at this point,” she said. “They were not for the sale of the F-15s before this political year. There is criticism to be lobbed at them as well.”

Clinton, in fact, took aim at Bush on Saturday for the President’s recent moves to dispense federal money for several programs that will benefit major electoral states.

“It’s like he’s dealing blackjack and giving everybody 21,” Clinton told several hundred Democrats in Falls Church, Va., where he spoke before heading at a fund-raiser at the Middleburg, Va., home of Democratic activist Pamela Harriman.

Each of the issues that Clinton finessed places him between warring constituencies. The AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Clinton, opposes the free trade agreement out of fears that it will cost American jobs. Democrats, independents and Republicans who want to broaden the nation’s trading partnerships applaud it.

The battle over whether to increase fuel-efficiency standards pits environmentalists, whom Clinton has courted assiduously, against the auto workers who form a traditional power base in the crucial upper Midwest.

Similarly, the proposed sale of 72 F-15s to Saudi Arabia potentially divides Israel and its partisans, who are concerned about maintaining a military edge in the volatile Middle East, and U.S. defense workers, for whom the sale would mean continued employment.

In discussing issues on which he has yet to take a firm position, Clinton frequently illustrates what Republicans call his desire to please everyone and what his supporters say is a thoughtful, if occasionally long-winded, willingness to see all sides of a problem.

Questioned by a Detroit television anchorman on Thursday about the free trade agreement, Clinton said he was still studying it. Then, he first argued potential good points.

“I believe that we need a new trade agreement with Mexico; I have long been a supporter of it,” he said. “What I’m doing now is to conduct a thorough study of this agreement even as Congress has opened hearings on it.”

Then he offered reasons to be against the agreement.

“I would note, by the way, that there’s nothing in the agreement about worker retraining--and the President really has no proposal on that--and very little on environmental cleanup, two things he made real commitments on,” Clinton said.

In most cases, Clinton’s straddles are technically consistent. Although he can lean stronger one way or the other depending upon the audience, he has generally left himself some room for maneuvering on the free trade agreement and the F-15 sales.

He appears to have edged closer to flip-flopping in the case of the fuel-efficiency standards. After initially supporting a bill that would raise the average American car’s fuel efficiency from 27.5 to 40 miles per gallon, he has recently called the hike “a goal.”

The Democratic nominee did not discuss the F-15s, the trade agreement or any other controversial subject on Saturday, which he dedicated to attacking the Republican use of the “family values” issue.

“There’s been a lot of talk in this election season about family values,” Clinton said at a Washington rally. “Many who have used those terms have used them in divisive ways.

“We are being called today, you and I, to measure up to the real family values of America--which is to value our families and help each other raise our children and strengthen our families.”