Crime Takes It on Lam in ’92 Campaign : Issues: No candidate feels others are vulnerable on a subject already overshadowed by the economic debate.

There’s something missing from this year’s presidential campaign: crime as a hot-button issue.

Not since Richard M. Nixon wielded law and order in his successful bids for the White House has crime been almost ignored. Its back-seat status, Republican and Democratic strategists say, is because of the nation’s economic woes.

“The economy has been so harmful to most people’s lives in a way they haven’t experienced in a long time,” says Donald E. Santarelli, a Washington lawyer who helped design and administer Nixon’s hard-line crime policies. “When you’re both hungry and afraid, hunger takes the No. 1 spot.”

Also, none of the candidates this year appears particularly vulnerable to charges that he is soft on crime--an accusation that Republican presidential candidates have used against Democrats in the past.

As a Justice Department official put it, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton doesn’t suffer from the “glass jaw” that made 1988 Democratic candidate Michael S. Dukakis such an inviting target for George Bush.

The then-governor of Massachusetts never shook the stigma of Willie Horton, who escaped while on furlough under Dukakis’ prison policies, then raped a woman and stabbed a man. The soft-on-crime image was magnified by Dukakis’ opposition to capital punishment.

Clinton has no such vulnerability. Last January--three weeks before the New Hampshire primary--the Arkansas governor left the campaign trail to return to his state for the execution of a brain-damaged cop killer, who his attorney described as so deranged that he “barks like a dog and howls in his cell.”

In Clinton’s 12 years as governor, he has approved execution dates 71 times for 27 prisoners. Four have been carried out so far. He has not commuted a single death sentence.

Bush has tried to tie Clinton to New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty, because Clinton said last June that Cuomo could make a good Supreme Court justice. But, given Clinton’s own position, the President has had little success.

Although the positions of Bush, Clinton and independent Ross Perot are most striking for their similarities--such as advocating and helping fund “community policing” and setting up “boot camps” for juvenile offenders--there are some differences.

Bush: The Bush forces note that the Administration launched the largest anti-drug campaign in U.S. history--spending $51 billion from fiscal 1989 through fiscal 1993--and elevated fighting drugs to a foreign-policy issue, winning stepped-up enforcement by key Latin American countries involved in the production and transit of drugs.

Federal drug czar Bob Martinez says the effort has worked, citing decreases in current overall drug use. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse has reported that drug use fell 13% among all age groups from 1988 through 1991, and dropped 27% among adolescents.

But the latest measures of drug abuse--the number of cocaine-related hospital emergencies-- jumped nearly 35% during the first quarter of 1992, dealing a major setback to Administration claims of success in the drug war.

On guns, Bush opposes the Brady bill, named for James S. Brady, former President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who was severely wounded in the 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life. The bill would impose a nationwide waiting period for handgun purchasers so their records could be checked.

Instead, Bush would step up federal “Triggerlock” prosecutions. Under the Triggerlock program, convicted felons who use a firearm during a crime and anyone who uses a firearm for certain drug or violent crimes are committing federal--not just state--offenses and are subject to more severe punishment in federal court.

Clinton: He proposes that the federal government help put 100,000 more police officers on the streets.

He would provide funding by resuscitating federal aid included in the crime bill that he contends Republican senators killed, and by allowing college graduates to work off their education loans by performing community service--including as police officers.

On drugs, Clinton promises to do a better job of interdicting illicit narcotics before they enter the United States. For one thing, he says, he would make drugs a much more important part of foreign policy so that Latin American countries producing narcotics will use U.S. assistance to wean their farmers away from coca leaves.

Clinton says he would place greater emphasis on treating drug addiction than Bush has been willing to fund.

On guns, Clinton supports the Brady bill as well as a sweeping ban on assault weapons, domestic as well as imported--probably his sharpest difference with Bush on crime. The President banned such imported weapons by executive order, but opposes banning domestic weapons.

Clinton advisers say his program would cost $7 billion, but won’t offer a breakdown of the costs.

Perot: The most detailed of Perot’s proposals for coping with crime and drugs is found in his book, “United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Our Country.”

Perot would lock up for life, with no chance of parole, anyone convicted of three violent crimes--no matter what age they were when the crimes were committed. All other violent criminals would be imprisoned until they learned to read and gained a marketable skill.

Perot would make former military bases and other federal facilities available to states to rehabilitate youths convicted of drug crimes or violent offenses.

He would begin joint public-private experiments to divert gang members from criminal enterprises to legitimate profit-making activities.

He gave a lukewarm endorsement of the Brady bill, calling it “a timid step in the right direction.”

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Decatur, Ga., Davenport, Iowa, Milwaukee and Paducah, Ky.

President Bush campaigns in Burlington, Sussex, Oshkosh, Stevens Point and Chippewa Falls, Wis.

Ross Perot campaigns in Tampa, Fla., and Kansas City, Mo.