Clinton Has TV Audience in the Bag

President Clinton charmed a live studio audience of rapt Russians so thoroughly on Friday that one starry-eyed member considered wrapping her hand, which had just shaken his, in a Baggie to retain the sensation.

“I talked with him just as if he were a guy from my street,” marveled Natasha Vysotskaya, a 36-year-old sociologist. “I should put my hand in a cellophane bag.”

From Vyborg to Vladivostok, millions of viewers who tuned in to Russia’s first direct, live address and Q&A; session by a U.S. President were subjected to the full force of the down-home salesmanship he used to woo American voters.

Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln. He assured a 13-year-old Russian boy that with hard work and luck he, too, might grow up to be president. He praised the energy, education and rich heritage of Mother Russia and promised “a light at the end of this long tunnel.”

He was so persuasive that he even won a round of applause for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, whose popularity lately is lukewarm at best, by pointing out that Russia is lucky to have “a president who’s willing to wade into the tides of history and make decisions.”

If the studio audience was any indication, Clinton’s rating may well be higher now in Russia than at home.

Unlike the old Soviet days, when a lecture on democracy and economics from a U.S. President would have drawn bellows of outraged pride from Communist patriots, the Russians in Friday’s audience--largely university students--took his preaching with equanimity. Several noted that he seemed to want to teach Russia how to run its affairs, but their comments held little rancor.

“His assessment of our situation, especially of the economy, is about right,” said Viktor Mikheyev, a technician at the Ostankino television center where Clinton spoke.

“He’s a skillful politician,” said Natasha Sokolova, a Moscow State University student. “No matter what the question was, he brought the answer around to friendship and democracy.”

Still, some queries from the audience carried an undertone of the humiliation of lost power that has helped spur Russia’s new wave of ultranationalism.

One questioner implied that Clinton was trying to prescribe a single, American-style recipe for Russian democracy and that Americans tend to say, “ ‘Come on, comrades, be just like us.’ And isn’t that incorrect?”

The strongest applause came when a Russian teacher asked why school exchange programs all seemed to bring Russian children to America but not vice versa, and Clinton acknowledged that they should be more two-sided and that American children could learn much here.

One Russian broadcaster appeared miffed that so many people in the audience--which had been meant to consist of typical Russians--knew English. He wondered on the air if a hall of nearly 400 Russian-speakers could be gathered in America.

Clinton, obviously aware of the pitfalls awaiting him, tried openly to avoid them; he asserted repeatedly that the United States was not trying to dominate Russia, saying, “I want to have an equal partnership here.

“I don’t want to have any dictatorial control in Russia,” he maintained, repeatedly referring to the United States and Russia as partners.

But sometimes even his attempted compliments appeared to backfire; he sounded like a teacher encouraging a lazy pupil when he told Russians, “It is clear that you have the capability to do well.”

Clinton sounded pedantic as well as he described almost in outline form his vision of Russia’s three main challenges now: developing a free-market economy, strengthening democracy and learning to redefine itself as a great power without expanding its borders.

He moved from teaching Poli. Sci. 101 to Econ. 101 when he explained to Russians intimately acquainted with rampant inflation and its causes that the government must cut its spending if it wants to slow the price spiral.

He was facing a much tougher forum than the campaign-trail town meetings he set up to sell Americans on his candidacy and such issues as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Even the large part of the audience that spoke English did not respond to most of his light jokes, and only a faint laugh greeted his comically understated retort to Russian extremists’ demand that America return Alaska: “I don’t think I can go along with that.”

Nor were there any grateful murmurings when he promised to deliver on pledges of American aid and praised Russia’s past as “a history of heroism.”

When Clinton said that he believes the greatest difference between Russia and the United States is that Russia is one of the world’s youngest democracies while America is one of its oldest, one Russian cameraman muttered: “Great. Now we have a big brother.”

One woman called Clinton on not having praised Russia’s great spiritual energy--he remedied that immediately--and a man pressed him on continuing to give aid to Baltic countries where the Russian minorities say they are treated as second-class citizens. Clinton said he was awaiting a report from Latvia and that its conclusion on whether Russians’ rights were violated there would affect U.S. policy.

Overall, however, the audience was a gentle one, as hospitable Russian audiences tend to be to foreigners. Warm smiles lit many faces at the show’s best moment, when a 13-year-old Russian boy who had seen a photo of Clinton as a teen-ager shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy asked when his presidential ambitions had begun to take root.

“Come shake hands with me, and maybe you’ll be president of Russia some day,” Clinton told him.

And he did.