Behind-Scenes Tension Peaks as Big Day Nears : Campaign: Clinton insiders battle nerves as outsiders petition for jobs in what would be new Adminstration.

As David Wilhelm lifts a glass to sip a lunchtime Coke, his hands tremble with anxiety and fatigue. George Stephanopoulos has angry red sores on his fingers from nervously picking at his cuticles. James Carville stalks the halls outside his office and growls at colleagues.

Six days remain before Americans go to the polls, and inside the headquarters of Democratic candidate Bill Clinton, the tension has peaked at an inhuman level.

“My wife told me that in the middle of the night, I was muttering in my sleep that I had to put more money into Ohio,” says Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager.

“I’m nervous. I hate this. You just never know,” says Stephanopoulos, the campaign’s communications director.

The mood has lightened a bit since Ross Perot’s public airing of dirty-tricks charges against the Republicans, which most Clinton strategists believe will seriously stall the independent candidate’s campaign. But despite that, the unpredictability of this year and their party’s history of failure disturbs the sleep of Clinton’s aides and haunts their dreams.

“I’ve worked for so many Democratic campaigns, I can’t imagine what winning would be like,” admits Clinton aide Ricky Seidman.

“In a sense, it’s easier when you’re behind,” says campaign chairman Mickey Kantor. “When you’re down at this stage, you’re just constantly punching. You throw everything up and see what sticks.” But when a campaign is ahead, “you just worry about everything.”

The mood is far different outside the inner circle. Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters is aswarm with Democratic officials and wannabes who hope that being here, however briefly, will help assure them of a future place in the Clinton Administration they envision.

Many pairs of eyes and much speculation center on what may be going on in the office building a few blocks away from campaign headquarters where Los Angeles lawyer Gerald Stern coordinates a small staff that has begun working on plans for a possible Clinton transition.

Stern, on leave from his job as executive vice president and general counsel of Occidental Petroleum, and Kantor, also a Los Angeles attorney, run the transition-planning effort, which already has received thousands of unsolicited resumes and telephone calls.

The influx has only boosted the tension as the newcomers and longtime Clinton aides warily eye each other, each coveting potential Administration jobs.

“Parasites,” snarls one aide.

“I can’t tell you the number of times someone has called and said, ‘Could you just meet with this guy for a few minutes? It would really help him to be able to go home and say he met with you” says another mid-level Clinton aide. “It’s crazy.”

Preparations are in full swing for the massive election-night horde that will descend on this small city.

Telephone workers have begun splicing fiber-optic cables to accommodate thousands of temporary new telephone lines. TV satellite trucks have started to arrive.

The local newspaper, reflecting the state’s traditional and deeply ingrained collective inferiority complex, bears advertisements exhorting Little Rock residents to “clean up, spruce up” because “the news media of the entire world will be in Arkansas.”

And officious-looking young men bearing cellular phones can be seen scurrying around downtown streets checking on progress.

All that attention works like a magnet on campaign aides, journalists and Democratic hangers-on. In fact, there is not much for any of them to do here. Most of the decisions of the campaign have been made. The television time has been purchased. Nearly all the advertisements have been done. The schedule is largely drawn up. But no one wants to leave.

That fact is a source of some frustration to senior Clinton campaign aides, who have been trying to move as many people as possible into battleground states to work on get-out-the-vote drives.