Clinton Visits Chicago in Bid to Aid Rostenkowski : Politics: President praises beleaguered House leader in his reelection drive. He also travels to Pittsburgh to improve ties with Britain’s Major.

President Clinton hit the road Monday to bolster support for one ally, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), and to improve sometimes-troubled ties with another, British Prime Minister John Major.

Clinton visited Rostenkowski’s Chicago-area district to talk crime and health care reform while praising a lawmaker whose reelection effort has been clouded by a federal criminal investigation into allegations of misusing House post office funds and other financial matters.

The President later met with Major in Pittsburgh, Pa., where the two declared their mutual agreement on the situations in Bosnia and Northern Ireland and hailed their countries’ special relationship.

Clinton has been criticized for his visit with Rostenkowski, which some said would give the appearance of White House interference in the Justice Department investigation. But the President, who has rejected that charge, was unstinting in his praise of Rostenkowski--who as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is vital to prospects for the Administration’s health reform plan.

Speaking on health care and crime at Wright Junior College in Chicago, Clinton praised Rostenkowski’s role in building support for last year’s budget legislation and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Without Rostenkowski, he said, the Administration would not have put “the economy on the right course.” Some members of Congress needed prodding by their constituents to act in Washington--but not Rostenkowski, Clinton said. “It’s in his bones.”

Rostenkowski returned Clinton’s generous praise, saying the President’s determination in fighting crime showed that he was not afraid to “take on . . . a tough one.”

While Clinton’s endorsements apparently have not helped some other Democratic candidates--including former New Jersey Gov. James J. Florio, former New York Mayor David N. Dinkins and unsuccessful Los Angeles mayoral candidate Michael Woo--this visit could help Rostenkowski. The President is popular in the district, which includes northwest Chicago and some suburbs, and the five-way race is tight.

A poll taken by the Chicago Tribune in early January gave Rostenkowski 24% of the vote and State Sen. John Cullerton 18%, but left 35% undecided.

The White House has denied that the trip was political in nature, describing it as a routine stop to promote the Administration’s health and crime agenda. When a reporter shouted to ask whether his praise for Rostenkowski represented an endorsement in the primary, Clinton ignored him.

Later, Clinton flew to Pittsburgh to meet Major for some visible diplomatic fence-mending and sightseeing in the area where Major’s father and grandfather once worked. Major’s grandfather, Abraham Ball, worked in area steel mills in the Monongahela Valley in the 1870s and 1880s.

The two leaders previously have disagreed on policies dealing with Bosnia, Northern Ireland and other subjects. But Clinton sought to demonstrate the strength of U.S.-British relations by hosting this visit, and making Major the first foreign head of state whom he has invited for an overnight stay in the White House.

Clinton angered the British last month by allowing a visa to Gerry Adams, leader of the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. But to stress U.S.-British agreement on fundamentals of the question, Clinton declared that violence “has no place” in the effort to solve the country’s problems.

And Major, whose government resisted Clinton’s effort to threaten the Bosnian Serbs with air strikes, insisted: “We’re agreed that firm action is right.”

After offering brief remarks in a hangar at Pittsburgh’s airport, Clinton and Major took a tour through Station Square, a 70-store mall that has been converted from a railroad station, past a collection of stores, and through an oyster bar and saloon.