Centrist Ally Calls Clinton ‘Old Democrat’ : Politics: The chairman of the party’s Leadership Council urges the President to re-embrace the group’s moderate values or lose its support.

Oklahoma Rep. Dave McCurdy, chairman of the centrist group that helped launch President Clinton’s 1992 White House bid, Tuesday branded Clinton an “old Democrat” at heart and warned that he must mend his ideological ways or risk losing the organization’s support.

McCurdy’s remarks to the 10th annual conference of the Democratic Leadership Council reflected the resentment and disappointment felt by many in his audience. They had regarded Clinton’s election in 1992 as a vindication of their own beliefs and as evidence that the Leadership Council had accomplished its longstanding goal of moving the Democratic Party to the center.

Clinton won the White House as “a moderate Democrat, a new Democrat,” McCurdy said at the start of the daylong policy forum here. “But he has governed as something else. Not as a liberal as the Republicans say, but as a transitional figure. For while Bill Clinton has the mind of a new Democrat he retains the heart of an old Democrat.”

Clinton himself concluded the conference Tuesday night with a forceful defense of his record. Though he did not respond directly to the criticism from McCurdy, he proudly ticked off a list of his Administration’s accomplishments, such as the enactment of the crime bill, reduction of the budget deficit and establishment of a national service program.

Referring to the November election results, the President blamed Democratic losses in part on the difficulties of bringing about change.

“Taking on tough issues is tough,” he said. “If you try to do a lot of things in a short time, you are going to make mistakes.”

But Clinton promised to keep pushing ahead.

“The answer is not to reverse what we have done but build on it,” he said. “The answer is to reach out to the middle class and say, ‘We know why you’re angry, we know why you’re frustrated, we got the message of the election. We’re not going back on our principles, but we’re coming right at you because we were hired to help you build a better future for yourselves. That is our only purpose.’ ”

The President’s vigor and passion won him rousing applause from the audience and a verbal salute from McCurdy.

“That’s the Bill Clinton we’ve been waiting to hear,” he said.

Earlier in the day in his own speech, McCurdy claimed that Clinton had tried to follow both a moderate and liberal agenda at the same time. The result of this dual approach to governance, he said, was “the great confusion of the American people.”

Looking to the future, McCurdy--who lost his bid for a Senate seat on Nov. 8--advised the President to avoid either making himself over as a Republican or joining with Democratic liberals on Capitol Hill “for a two-year trench war” against the Republican-controlled Congress. Instead, he urged Clinton to seek out moderates in both parties.

He also invited the President to endorse the Leadership Council’s own 10-point blueprint for economic, social and governmental reforms, which was unveiled this week as an alternative to the Republicans’ much-heralded “contract with America.”

All that Clinton needed to do, McCurdy said, was to make “a course correction, not a reversal.” But he added: “If he wants our support, Bill Clinton must make these changes.”

Although the harsh words are only the latest outbreak in an epidemic of finger-pointing since the midterm elections, they are particularly striking coming from McCurdy and the leadership conference. Not only was Clinton chairman of the organization before he ran for President, but McCurdy has been a longtime Clinton ally and had seconded his nomination for the presidency at the Democratic convention in New York.

McCurdy’s resentment is understandable. As he pointed out, his career as an elected official was interrupted at least temporarily by the November election, when he lost his bid for a Senate seat. And he implied later in the day during a panel discussion of the election that he thinks Clinton’s proposed gays-in-the-military policy and his advocacy of gun control contributed to that defeat.

It is not clear, though, how much leverage McCurdy and the Leadership Council--comprised largely of elected officials, lobbyists, lawyers and businessmen--will have in bargaining with Clinton on Capitol Hill.

Moderate Democrats in Congress suffered disproportionately heavy losses in the midterm elections because many of them represented closely divided districts that ultimately went Republican on Nov. 8. McCurdy said that of 90 members of the Mainstream Forum, a group of centrist House Democrats in the 103rd Congress, 32 will not return for the 104th Congress--either because of election defeats or retirement.

Asked about speculation that he might challenge Clinton for the 1996 nomination, the 44-year-old McCurdy, who had considered a presidential bid in 1992, said in an interview that he had no plans to do so. But he indicated that some of his supporters had been pressing him to consider such a move and he had not entirely ruled out the possibility.

To help soothe bruised feelings at the Leadership Council, the White House dispatched Vice President Al Gore, who, like Clinton, was a co-founder of the organization.

In his address to the group, Gore declared that “Mandate for Change,” the collection of essays on policy proposals published by the council two years ago, could be found in nearly every White House office.