NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Goes Out on a Limb but Luck Still Holds

Once again, President Clinton relied on a tactic that he has favored at several points in his political career: the long-odds gamble. And once again, he won.

In his difficult crusade for the North American Free Trade Agreement, Clinton traded insults with organized labor, broke ranks with half of Congress’ Democratic leaders and risked calamity by sending his vice president to joust with Ross Perot in a prime-time televised debate. He chanced a loss that he acknowledged would blight his foreign policy, a defeat that allies warned could stop his presidency in its tracks.

All this on behalf of an arcane trade agreement negotiated by the Administration of George Bush, the adversary he defeated in the presidential election a year ago. He could have ducked the trade issue at relatively little political cost.

“It was a high-risk strategy from the start,” said William Daley, Clinton’s top adviser on the trade fight. “We knew there were dangers, there were a lot of them and they were big ones.”

Other analysts compared Clinton’s gamble to his decision during the 1992 campaign to tempt the wrath of black voters by assailing rapper Sister Souljah for her comments on violence. They compared it, too, to his decision to appear on CBS’ “60 Minutes” with Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge past troubles in their marriage and discuss accusations of marital infidelity.

Clinton has stuck his neck out at other points in his young presidency, but “this was the real crapshoot; this was him getting out on the wing of the plane and dancing the Charleston,” said Ross K. Baker, an expert on Congress at Rutgers University.

By many accounts, Clinton fought for the trade agreement because he sincerely believes that freer trade offers the nation one of the best routes to prosperity--and is probably inevitable, anyway. He increased his odds of success by making dozens of last-minute deals with lawmakers: to protect home-state agriculture, to help with political fund raising and even to pay for pet projects in their districts.

Still, a comparison of the potential risks and rewards shows just how much Clinton risked.

Adoption of the agreement, which still must be approved by the Senate, would pay off for Clinton in a variety of ways. By signaling that the United States favors free trade, it would smooth the way for Clinton’s efforts to extract new agreements from Pacific trading partners, in the global General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade being negotiated in Geneva and in future trade talks.

Perhaps a more important political dividend is the perception that Clinton is willing to fight for his principles. That, in turn, could help reverse the public’s gravest misgiving about him, demonstrated again in polls this week, that Clinton is not a strong leader who will battle for his beliefs.

The trade debate may have been the first instance in which the President, faced with somewhat hostile public opinion, has waded into a major issue and pulled the consensus in his direction. Polls show that Americans, who opposed the pact by a 2-1 margin only a few weeks ago, are now evenly divided on the issue.

The victory reinforces Clinton’s argument that he really is a “new Democrat,” willing to break with orthodoxy and able, if necessary, to take on powerful constituencies, such as labor, environmentalists and minority rights advocates. The demonstration of legislative strength could help keep Democratic interest groups in line in intraparty disputes.

Still, most Americans are unlikely to remember the intricate details of the policy debate over the trade agreement in the years ahead. The issue is complicated. Polls have shown repeatedly that most Americans do not understand it and do not feel strongly about it, despite impassioned attacks by Perot and leaders of organized labor.

Once the trumpet flourishes accompanying Wednesday’s victory have died down, the agreement probably will not rank prominently among the economic issues debated in the 1996 election.

In the view of some observers, any lasting benefits to Clinton are dwarfed by the damage he would have suffered if the agreement had gone down to defeat.

Perhaps its failure would not have jeopardized Clinton’s year-old presidency, as Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) warned last week. But it would have suggested that a President who entered the battle with a weak mandate and a thin political base could not overcome his party’s entrenched interest groups, even with the help of Republican allies.

A loss “would undermine his credibility as leader of the party but also as leader of the government,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), an ally on the trade issue, said before the vote.

By demonstrating Clinton’s weakness in Congress, failure also would have strengthened lawmakers who are pushing rival health care reform plans. And it would have made it more difficult for Clinton to line up support on other tough issues: welfare reform, campaign financing and anti-crime legislation.

In the global arena, a defeat would have marked the first failure of a major trade agreement since World War II. It would have diminished Clinton’s international standing and perhaps that of the United States.

A defeat would have been doubly painful because Clinton has hoped that aggressive efforts to open up overseas markets for U.S. goods would be a centerpiece of his foreign relations record.

By chilling the international trade climate, a loss also would have hurt export industries and consumers. Important for Californians, it would have delivered a blow to the reform government of Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, which would have hurt some U.S. businesses and clouded hopes that a wealthier Mexico would slow illegal immigration.

Clinton’s decision to bet heavily on the trade agreement entailed another gamble: his judgment that he could later repair the rift with labor. The Administration and organized labor are bound by so many common objectives--health care reform, a higher minimum wage and striker replacement--that time will heal the wounds naturally, White House aides argued.

But, as the climactic vote neared, labor officials and their congressional allies warned of the retribution that may await Clinton.

“The bitterness will linger,” AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said. “Our memory is usually pretty good.”

Aides noted that Clinton not only took on the issue, against the advice of many, but also turned away from repeated opportunities to bail out.

Clinton came under pressure to abandon altogether his halfhearted commitment to the pact in the early days of his presidency. Instead, he went to Austin, Tex., met with Salinas and repeated his interest in the agreement.

Up to the moment when the accompanying environmental and labor agreements were signed in September, Clinton could have backed out gracefully by claiming that the side agreements were insufficient. Instead, he continued to raise the stakes by devoting more of his time and attention to the issue.

“There were a lot of escape hatches all the way along,” said Mark D. Gearan, Clinton’s communications director. “We never took them.”