NEWS ANALYSIS : Tacking to Right, Clinton Borrows GOP Core Issues

He says he wants to balance the federal budget, eliminate government regulations, clean up television programming and let children say prayers in public school. Has Bill Clinton turned into a conservative?

Democrats on Capitol Hill and in liberal interest groups grumble that the President is making a sudden lunge toward the right--and leaving some of his own supporters behind. Republicans level the same charge and worry that Clinton may even succeed.

“If he can keep doing this for 16 months, he will cut dramatically into the middle,” GOP political consultant Eddie Mahe said. “Given the options available to him, this is a strategy that makes sense.”

Clinton and his aides insist that their fundamental message hasn’t changed. Ever since he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton has preached a “third way” between traditional liberal and conservative policies.

What has changed, however, is Clinton’s strategy for seizing the political center. Instead of last spring’s combative Clinton, who denounced GOP budget cuts as heartless, this season’s Clinton is more conciliatory and more centrist--at least in the issues he chooses to talk about from the bully pulpit of his presidency.

In three speeches over the past two weeks, the President has stressed two themes: shoring up “middle-class values [and] middle-class dreams,” and seeking bipartisan cooperation.

“Unless we can find a way to honestly and openly debate our differences and find common ground . . . we won’t be able to meet the economic and other challenges before us,” he said last week as he announced a federal effort to protect private religious activity in public schools.

Beneath the soothing rhetoric is a straightforward political strategy, White House aides say. In 1994, Republicans succeeded in painting Clinton as a big-government liberal, using his failed national health-care proposal as proof. Now the President’s political goal is to repaint himself as a centrist and stigmatize his GOP opponents as right-wing extremists.

“This is not just about redefining the President,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who has been consulted by the White House. “This is about redefining the debate. . . . He is not letting the right have these debates on their own terms.”

Still, redefining the public view of Clinton remains a major problem for the President and his staff. A CNN/USA Today survey published last week found that 51% of those polled described Clinton as an old-style Democrat, while only 44% called him “a new kind of Democrat.”

To change those numbers, Clinton is doing two things: looking for issues that help demonstrate his “new Democrat” beliefs and emphasizing his desire for a gentler, less partisan style of politics.

On issues such as balancing the budget and defending schoolchildren’s right to pray, Clinton’s aim isn’t just to position himself in the center. The more important goal, aides say, is to deprive Republicans of some of their favorite talking points to use against Democrats.

Since Clinton agreed to try to balance the budget, “the argument isn’t over who wants to do it and who doesn’t,” one White House aide said. “Now it’s a narrower argument over how we do it.”

Likewise, by speaking out for children’s right to engage in religious activity at school, another aide crowed: “The President killed the [GOP-sponsored] constitutional amendment” on that issue.

Clinton’s other new theme, conciliation, is a product of his own longtime bent for seeking compromise plus the argument of some political aides that the public desperately wants less partisanship. Aides say that argument got a boost from two recent events: the aftermath of the April 19 bombing in Oklahoma City, when Clinton won wide praise for his appeals for civility, and the President’s polite mini-debate with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) last month, which Clinton said met “a literally overwhelming response . . . from people of all political parties.”

The lesson, White House aides said, was: Harmony plays well; the President looks good when he can rise above the fray. And when Clinton does enter partisan battle, he will try to paint Republicans as extremists who have abandoned the mainstream.

That was the approach he took during his radio address on Saturday, arguing that both parties stand for less federal regulation but that the GOP is going too far.

“We’ve got to cut regulations that impose unnecessary red tape,” Clinton said. “But as we cut, we have to remember that we have a responsibility to protect our citizens from things that threaten their safety and their health. Those are goals we all support, and we can accomplish them in a reasonable, responsible, bipartisan way.”

But the Republican bill on regulatory reform now being considered by the Senate goes too far, Clinton said. “I believe it poses a real danger to the health and safety of our families,” he complained, saying the bill would make it more difficult to impose safety rules on commuter airlines or improve food inspection to prevent deaths from contaminated meat.

Still, in keeping with his new theme, the President did not threaten to veto the bill--although Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) had said he would. Instead, Clinton said: “I want to sign a real regulatory reform bill” and challenged Democrats and Republicans to work together to produce one.

Aides said Clinton’s search for the center has been one of the most visible products of his new reliance on Dick Morris, a sometime political adviser who is viewed with alarm by many liberals because he works mostly for Republicans.

But the main impetus behind Clinton’s move, they said, came from the President himself--a fact that appears to have muted the internal debate over the strategy.

Outside the White House, however, some congressional Democrats and interest groups have been restive--complaining that Clinton has muted his support for their favorite causes.

Mahe predicted that liberal interest groups will pull Clinton back in their direction. “At some point, his advisers will get worried about losing their core constituency, and he’ll move to the left.”

But White House aides discounted that theory and said they are trying to assuage the liberals’ concerns without changing Clinton’s basic direction.

One move under discussion is appointing Ann Lewis, a former director of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, to a high White House post.

Liberal disaffection “is a real problem that has to be addressed,” Lewis said in an interview. “But . . . Bill Clinton doesn’t fit into their traditional boxes. And, to put it bluntly, he wouldn’t have gotten elected if he did.”