A Weaving of Symbols Into One Clear Picture : Images: Clinton will raid the republic’s attic for an array of icons in an effort to connect with as many groups as possible.

It’s about unity. And diversity. Hope. And renewal. Continuity. And generational change. And that’s just for starters.

This is the inaugural week of Bill Clinton, a man who can never ever quite do enough, say enough, stay up late enough, to get across every point he wants to make.

And in keeping with his proclivities, this inaugural celebration has turned the greater Washington area, from the Blue Ridge foothills to the Anacostia River flood plain, into a sprawling Disney World of political symbols--enough for a full presidential term. Or even two.

“He said he wanted to focus like a laser beam, but the way this has worked out, his theme should have been a thousand points of light,” says Michael K. Deaver, the image-maker to Ronald Reagan and impresario of the 1984 inaugural.

Jimmy Carter strode down Pennsylvania Avenue to signal an end to the “imperial presidency” of Richard M. Nixon. Reagan wore a morning suit and spoke of patriotism to mark a return to conservatism.

Their plans were built around a single idea. No such modest ambition for William Jefferson Clinton.

He plans to dust off a variety of relics from the republic’s attic in an effort to connect with as many groups as possible at a uniquely photogenic, and massively televised, moment.

It’s all the final stage, of course, of the triumphal Clinton campaign parade that has been on the road for 15 months, bass drums thumping and trombones swooning. The goal now is to enlist heart-tugging symbols to strengthen public support before pre-inaugural rapture turns into a ground war over deficits, taxes and medical bills.

Washington’s ghosts are Clinton’s props in this task. The events will invoke the grandeur of more than a half-dozen Presidents (Clinton has let it be known he’s even studying Nixon’s inaugural speech).

His week starts this morning with a pilgrimage to the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, father of Clinton’s political party, and, not incidentally, the kind of brainy guy who in a later century might have been a Rhodes scholar. Then Clinton embarks on a bus trip to Washington that will recall the dusty inaugural journeys, by horseback and phaeton, made by Jefferson and George Washington.

To make a point about the healing of nations and races, the journey will take him through Civil War battlegrounds to the Arlington, Va., home of Gen. Robert E. Lee and across the Potomac span once called Reunion Bridge.

Clinton will visit the shrines of other presidencies. He stops this evening at the Lincoln Memorial. On Monday, he is scheduled to visit John F. Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

And if flattering comparisons are drawn between Clinton and former chief executives, hey, no problem.

Clinton’s team has long strained to make a symbolic point about diversity and public access, and the week will have lots of each.

The record-breaking agenda of 23 official and 67 unofficial events includes separate balls for vegetarians, the homeless, American Indians and veterans.

The parade has bumped some of those stuffy military units for a gay band, lawn chair drill team, chain saw jugglers and Elvis impersonators.

The idea of touching average Americans, worth political bonus points during the campaign, is also back. The President-elect, always smooth in those video “town hall” settings, will serve as host Monday at a lunch for 50 average folks he met during the political season.

The scale of the Clinton team’s ambitions is evident in the “Bells of Hope” bell-ringing extravaganza that is to take place at 6 p.m. today. The idea is to make even the politically alienated feel in touch by encouraging them to ring doorbells, car horns and dinner bells as Clinton rings a replica Liberty Bell.

But this group didn’t want the symbolism confined to a single planet. They plan to have the astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour join in with electronic chimes. (The space travelers have recorded a chime-ringing to be played in case they’re asleep at the critical moment.)

While it is playing up some symbols, the Clinton group has gone to great lengths to avoid others.

The announcement of plans for a White House “open house” Thursday morning drew discomfiting comparisons to the Andrew Jackson open-house debacle of 1829, when Kentucky squirrel hunters in homespun garb got into food fights, trashed the furniture and alarmed Jackson’s bodyguards.

Inaugural planners quickly explained that the open house idea was inspired not by Old Hickory but by Clinton’s past practice in Arkansas. The crowd would be chosen by lottery and carefully shepherded.

The prospect of Clinton’s inaugural address has also raised questions about whether the notoriously long-winded governor would try to outdo the 110-minute address by William Henry Harrison, who caught pneumonia and died as a consequence of his 1841 inaugural speech. Clinton and aides aren’t sharing many details but have suggested the governor’s speech would be more like Lincoln’s punchy second address, which contained a mere 698 words.

How much can Clinton hope to gain from all of this?

The events are likely to pay rich political dividends in the short run, boosting pre-inaugural approval ratings that already are topping 70%. But over the long term, the extravaganza’s value will rest entirely on judgments about the Clinton presidency.

If the presidency flops, memories of this frantic week may not be charitable.

Even today, Carter says his walk down Pennsylvania Avenue was the most popular thing he ever did. But when Carter’s presidency went sour, the walk came to symbolize for some the hollow image-making that Carter’s Georgians seemed to offer as a substitute for leadership.

Some observers are already saying Clinton may be trying to do too much.

“If you try to do too many things with too many events, you risk that the bad ones will detract from the memory of what works,” says Thomas Cronin, a presidential scholar at Colorado College.

Some people who planned inaugurals for the Republicans are harsher.

“It’s becoming very unfocused to me,” says Deaver. “I think there’s almost too much symbolism. What’s he trying to get across, for instance, with the Jefferson visit? I’m not sure.”

The inaugural events, to be televised on three broadcast networks and three cable networks, offer a rare opportunity for Clinton to seize the attention of Americans. With its remorseless schedule, the Clinton festivities will basically dominate the news for the duration.

But Deaver contends that if the program appears a muddle, viewers may resort to the 40-odd cable choices still available to them.

With sax solos, bus trips and talk-show gigs, Clinton has proved his mastery of the political symbol. But the week’s big show may carry another risk for him because of that reputation.

“There’s a chance all this will make him look like a guy who wants to just keep campaigning and not get down to the business of governing,” says Stephen Salmore, political analyst at Rutgers University.

The scale of the pageant also poses some delicate problems. The events’ organizers declared in December that the inauguration festivities would be one-third cheaper than Bush’s $30-million 1989 bash.

They may come to regret those words. Inaugural officials already are acknowledging that the cost will at least match that of the Bush gala and may well exceed it.

The events are paid for with private funds; tax dollars will cover only indirect costs, such as extra Secret Service protection. But even some Democrats have suggested that in its scale, the inaugural is becoming, well, almost Republican.

The inaugural’s organizers and supporters wave off such criticisms. If the events have many themes, Clinton will tie them together in his inaugural address, they insist.

“He’s bringing in the old and the new, and involving all sorts of people and organizations,” says Gerald Rafshoon, a top official of Carter’s inauguration. “That’s what these things have always been about.”