Promises, Pleas End Campaign : Democrat: Clinton stumps through 9 states in a 30-hour wrap-up marathon. He pledges to lead a newly optimistic America to next century.

Thirteen months after he set off on a long-shot crusade against a popular incumbent, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton swept across the country Monday with the presidency achingly close to his grasp and promised he would lead a newly optimistic America toward the next century.

Hoarse but smiling, Clinton hit nine states on a nonstop, 30-hour marathon beginning early Monday and leading him across the breadth of the industrial Midwest, into the South, across to Texas and the Southwest and into the Rockies.

He was to come home at midday today to Little Rock, where he had announced his candidacy on Oct. 3, 1991, when President Bush was riding a wave of support from the Gulf War and even Democrats thought Clinton’s challenge to be a fool’s errand.

More than a year has passed and the circumstances have vastly changed--Clinton began Monday with a strong and consistent lead over Bush in public opinion surveys--but his pitch was remarkably similar to the one he used as he entered the race.

“This election is a race between hope and fear,” he said in Cleveland, the second of his stops in the mad dash that took him 4,106 miles in a relentless search for votes. “Tomorrow we will drown out the negative voices that have held us back for too long and build the America you deserve . . ..

“I’ll work as hard as I can for you every day. I’ll try to unite us all, try to stop the division by race, by region, by age, by gender. We’re going up together. It won’t be easy but we can do it!”

Throughout the day, as he dodged rainstorms and snowstorms and reveled in an occasional sunny sky, Clinton cast the election in the most basic of terms: the clash between new ways and old, negativity and optimism, laissez-faire and activist government.

“I believe things can be better,” Clinton told supporters gathered in a steady rain in Philadelphia, where he began his day at a diner with the sorts of voters he has assiduously courted.

“I have fought to make things better. I have fought for jobs, for health care, for education, to employ people, to take control of their own lives and to bring this country together. And tomorrow is our chance to do it.

“Press on and we’ll have a victory tomorrow . . . “

Clinton’s campaign has ridden the heights of optimism and the depths of despair, and it emerged in the last days of the campaign relentlessly upbeat.

The candidate himself appeared buoyant despite a nagging bout of laryngitis, and seemed to grow more effervescent as the day proceeded. His confidence showed in one profound way: Clinton rarely mentioned his rivals--Bush and independent Ross Perot--as he hopscotched around the country.

In McAllen, deep in the Rio Grande Valley, Clinton stood silhouetted against the nighttime sky and lightly upbraided Bush.

“My opponent has spent too much time in this election attacking me,” he said. “If he had spent so much time attacking your problems, we’d be in a lot better shape today, and so would he.”

The candidate, who was accompanied throughout the trip by his wife, Hillary, described himself as “hopeful and determined.”

“I take this race one day at a time,” Clinton told reporters at midday. “I’m determined to drive home one more time what this race is about: A choice between change and four years of the same.”

Monday was a day of anticipation not only for Clinton, his family and his loyalists, but for Democrats who have been denied the presidency for 12 long years.

Democratic Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown traveled with Clinton throughout the day, his broad smile reflecting the joy of party leaders who last year at this time could not have imagined Monday’s optimistic circumstances.

“I feel victory in the air,” Brown told several hundred Clinton supporters gathered in an airplane hangar in Romulus, Mich. “He is the candidate of everyday working men and women and working families who had to struggle to make ends meet with a President who did not care for them whatsoever.”

To reassure voters still on the fence, however, Clinton took great pains to cast his candidacy as one for the “new” Democratic Party.

“No more something for nothing,” he said in Romulus, near Detroit. “We don’t believe in bigger government, but we darn sure believe in better government that works for all the people, not just the privileged few.”

In all of his travels, Clinton said, “I never met people who asked me for a handout. All the American people want is a hand up, and it’s time they had a government that gave it to them.”

Clinton also unleashed a final burst of television advertising on election eve--a half hour on all three major broadcast networks. It combined a biographical film with footage from his bus tours, endorsements from prominent Americans and a final statement in which he told viewers they faced a choice between “fear and hope . . . drift and action . . . the status quo and change.”

The campaign also aired two final 30-second ads, reminiscent of the soft-focus “Morning in America” spots aired by Ronald Reagan in 1984, showing hopeful faces of citizens at Clinton rallies.

The half-hour show included a response to Perot’s new criticisms of Clinton--and it came from Perot’s former chief issues adviser, who now supports Clinton.

“I still support much of what we did,” said John White, referring to the plan he helped write for Perot. “The problem with the Perot plan is not the plan; it’s Ross Perot. He didn’t follow through. He didn’t show the kind of leadership we need in a President of the United States.”

At the time the Arkansas governor announced his candidacy, Bush was flying high off his leadership in the Gulf War, and better known Democrats were edging out of the race.

He was the early front-runner going into the first primary in New Hampshire, but there his rock-solid confidence was shattered by twin controversies, one over his draft record and the second over allegations that he had had an extramarital relationship.

Clinton slumped in the polls, but campaigned day and night and ultimately declared himself “the comeback kid” when he finished second to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas. Within a month, all of his competitors had been dispatched but former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

In the early summer, as Perot grabbed all the attention, Clinton persevered, detailing policy proposals that set the groundwork for his claim that he was more ready than his rivals to help rebuild the troubled American economy.

At a triumphant Democratic Convention, Clinton cemented a lead that, despite the ebb and flow of Perot’s candidacy and varied surges by President Bush, he never fully relinquished.

Clinton based much of his campaign on the economy, drawing attention both to its actual victims and those who lived in fear that their jobs would be next on the line. He returned to that theme over and over again on Monday:

“When you work hard, when you play by the rules, when you show an ability to change . . . and you still lose your job, you know your country is going in a wrong direction and it’s time to change.”

Clinton’s final campaign swing began shortly after dawn in Philadelphia, where he chatted up voters in a diner and received a book from one optimistic family. The title? “How the White House Really Works.” He then took off on what was essentially a series of touch-and-go landings in states deemed key by Clinton strategists.

First came Cleveland; then Romulus; then St. Louis; then south to Paducah, Ky.; west to McAllen and Ft. Worth; further west to Albuquerque, and north to Colorado. Finally, in the late morning today, Clinton’s three-plane entourage was due to land in Little Rock for a rally and voting. Aides said he would make no public statements until after the polls closed in California.

Throughout the day, crowds were large and enthusiastic, in keeping with Clinton’s reception virtually everywhere in the last week. At every site, they shouted “One More Day!” and clamored to touch the candidate.

Emotions, particularly among Clinton loyalists, were running high. In Romulus, Clinton encountered Ed McNamara, the county executive of Wayne County and a Clinton ally since the early days.

“One more day. We’re home free,” McNamara told Clinton, who responded with a hug.

Also in Romulus, Clinton met Rebecca McGowan, an old friend of both Clintons. As they embraced, tears filled McGowan’s eyes.

“I told him I was so proud of him and to go out and win it,” she said.

For Clinton as well, Monday appeared to be something of a sentimental journey. In every speech, he reminisced about the eight bus trips he took across the nation, about the people he met and their hopes and dreams.

He appeared to be running on pure adrenalin, for he has had little more than two or three hours of sleep a night for a week --and on election eve, slept only in his plane seat. His campaign days have stretched into the early morning hours and resumed just hours after the previous “day” ended.

On Sunday, for example, Clinton croaked through short speeches in Cincinnati and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., then ventured to East Rutherford, N.J., for a star-studded, get-out-the-vote rally that duplicated the emotional pitch of the Convention.

Then, not quite done, he traveled for more than an hour by bus to the Garden State Park racetrack in Cherry Hill, N.J., where thousands of enthusiastic supporters whooped and hollered as if oblivious to the time--1:15 a.m.

Taking to the stage, Clinton sternly warned his followers--as he would all day Monday--that Election Day had yet to come.

That done, the Arkansas governor grabbed a saxophone and jammed with the starring band, leading the euphoric leader of the Dovelles to shout, “The next President of the United States--and he plays sax! All right!”

Someone led Clinton to the winner’s circle--no subtlety for this campaign--where he met up with a trotter named “Bubba Clinton,” which recently won a race at 37-1 odds, an omen not lost on the governor.

The Democratic nominee said later that Bubba had passed along his recipe for victory. It was a joke, but nonetheless advice that Clinton followed all day Monday, as he had for the 13 months before.

“Just run hard,” he said.

Times staff writer David Lauter, in Washington, contributed to this story.

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Closing the Gap in the Home Stretch

The gap between the two major party presidential candidates tends to close in the final two weeks of a campaign, history shows. This chart includes post-World War II presidents who have sought reelection. Their standing in mid-October Gallup Polls is compared to November election results, measured in both cases as percentage points. Bush’s numbers are based on a Gallup Poll taken Oct. 18-20.

Poll in Election Year mid-October Result Harry S. Truman (D) 1948 Down by 5 Won by 4 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) 1956 Up by 10 Won by 15 Lyndon B. Johnson (D) 1964 Up by 35 Won by 23 Richard M. Nixon (R) 1972 Up by 23 Won by 23 Gerald R. Ford (R) 1976 Down by 6 Lost by 2 Jimmy Carter (D) 1980 Up by 4 Lost by 10 Ronald Reagan (R) 1984 Up by 20 Won by 18 George Bush (R) 1992 Down by 13 --

Source: Congressional Quarterly