Clinton Softly Deflects His Harsh Critics : Politics: GOP attacks are answered with calm words, actions. It’s hoped that the contrast will end up making Republicans hurt themselves.

He urged humility, asked divine guidance--and then added another thought aimed as much at his strident political adversaries as his assembled friends.

Words today “have the power to divide and destroy as never before,” President Clinton told several hundred VIPs Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, “to darken our spirits, weaken our resolve, divide our hearts.”

Clinton’s words pointed at an emerging White House strategy: to remind the public--gently but regularly--of the Republican leadership’s seeming penchant for intemperate remarks.

As House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms of North Carolina have attacked Democrats, the White House has begun a quiet campaign to contrast the GOP’s harsh rhetoric with its own behavior.

The prayer breakfast offered one such opportunity. Another came when Gingrich’s mother reported that her son had called First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a “bitch”--and Mrs. Clinton countered by inviting both Gingriches to a White House tour.

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By focusing on the other side’s outbursts, the White House can help realize its dearest hope that the newly ascendant Republicans will damage themselves in ways that the weakened Democrats cannot. And to the extent that they can make the other team look mean-spirited and petty, Democrats can deflect attention from what polls show is Clinton’s greatest weakness, the so-called character issue.

Rarely have a President and his wife been denounced in such strong terms in such a brief period as has occurred since the midterm election. Burned by controversy over his rich book deal, Gingrich followed the flap over the “bitch” comment by jabbing Mrs. Clinton for her controversial cattle futures trading.

Helms warned that Clinton is so hated in Helms’ home state that he might be shot if he ventured there. And Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) accused Clinton of giving “aid and comfort” to the nation’s enemies during the Vietnam War.

It is no fun to be accused of disloyalty or to be insulted. But if the situation is handled deftly, it can be turned to political advantage, as a string of presidents and other politicians have demonstrated over the years.

The art, said one Democratic strategist close to the White House, is to do it while remaining presidential and in a way “that gets attention--but leaves your fingerprints nowhere around.”

Thus, the President has been largely silent on the controversies, leaving the harsher language to his allies on Capitol Hill. When Armey referred to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) last week as “Barney Fag”--in what he called a slip of the tongue--the White House left it to House Democrats to complain of Armey’s “bully” tactics.

Clinton kept a discreet silence and White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry took a lofty tone. “It’s dispiriting when that kind of language is used in the public discourse,” he said.

Asked about Gingrich’s book deal last month, McCurry left it to the House Democratic leadership to blast the Speaker directly, though he did not pass up an opportunity to note Gingrich’s discomfort.

“I don’t know that I want to get into the torture that the Speaker’s experiencing right now,” he said, gliding on to another topic.

Mark A. Siegel, a Democratic strategist, said that the solemnity of the prayer breakfast offered a good opportunity for Clinton to raise the issue while seeming not to descend to bald partisanship. Likewise, he said, Mrs. Clinton’s invitation to the Gingriches was “perfect” because it seemed a show of generosity and forgiveness in the face of cruelty.

Some analysts said they believe that the recent upward drift in Clinton’s approval ratings may be tied at least slightly to new public comparisons of him and the Republicans.

“They look at Clinton and they read about Gingrich’s book deal and they say: ‘Maybe we’ve been too hard on this guy,’ ” said Howard Paster, who ran the White House congressional relations operation during Clinton’s first year.

But Siegel said that the Republicans’ outbursts may help the White House most simply by the way they throw the Republicans off their agenda.

“The more they talk about ‘bitches’ and ‘fags,’ the less they talk about the line-item veto and the balanced-budget amendment,” he said.