Blacks and Clinton: a Fidelity Test : Politics: He enjoys an unusual level of ease and acceptance, but this is a constituency easily alienated.

The scene at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Martin Luther King Day was a dream come true for a president seeking reelection. Bill Clinton’s trip to Atlanta was to be a nonpolitical one, a ceremonial visit to mark the 10th anniversary of the official observance of the martyred civil rights leader’s birthday, but the audience turned it into an anti-Republican demonstration of such intensity that Clinton felt compelled to step in and utter a few pieties about charity toward one’s enemies. As much of a spiritual tonic as the event was to Clinton, it also pointed out some of the problems he will have from the warm embrace of his party’s most loyal group, black voters.

Clinton’s relationship with the black community is one of the most exquisitely choreographed minuets in contemporary American politics. In many ways, it mirrors Bob Dole’s delicate tango with conservative Christians: Both men must retain these core constituencies without seeming to embrace them too uncritically. Clinton’s may be the more difficult dance step to negotiate because the payoff is more problematical, since blacks constitute such a small portion of the electorate and their turnout in recent elections has been low. Democratic politicians have discovered, to their dismay, that a good record on civil rights and other matters of concern to the black community is not sufficient to galvanize black voters. The loss of the New Jersey governorship by Jim Florio in 1993 can be explained almost entirely in terms of the falloff in black votes.

Bill Clinton enjoys greater support among African Americans than any other major white political figure. It is deeper than the routine approval that dissolves into apathy on election day when the weather is bad and there are a thousand more important things to do than cast a ballot. There is real warmth of feeling for Clinton within the black community that was mobilized in 1992 and may be even more strategic in 1996. This attachment has been made all the closer by blacks’ perception of the Republicans as eager to take a wrecking ball to affirmative action and to impose harsh, even punitive changes in social programs and policy.

But while Clinton’s stature in the eyes of black voters is high, he has shown wariness about seeming to embrace the black community and its issues too uncritically for fear of alienating white voters, especially at a time of great racial polarization.

Clinton’s adroitness in this regard was displayed vividly in the aftermath of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, when a little-known rap singer named Sister Souljah reportedly said that blacks should stop killing one another and devote more time to killing whites. Clinton marched right into the cannon’s mouth when he chose a Washington meeting of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition to denounce the singer’s remarks. His statement not only earned him the praise of the media; it also effectively disarmed Jackson, who had been sharply critical of Clinton.

In a 1993 speech to a group of black ministers in Memphis, Clinton demonstrated once again his unique ability to speak to black audiences with frankness as well as empathy when he took on the subject of violence in the inner city. As in his reprimand of Sister Souljah, Clinton’s words were received graciously by the black audience while striking responsive chords among white listeners.

Clinton has also risen in stout defense of affirmative action, which will boost his support among women as well as minorities. Such a stand may lose him the votes only of the most alienated white males, an unlikely Clinton constituency under the best of circumstances.

Clinton has been able to establish an emotional beachhead in the black community, and the combined force of the goodwill he enjoys there and a strong revulsion against much of what the GOP has been up to for the past year may well cause a surge in turnout among African American voters in November. He cannot, however, win with black votes alone. But this reality need not force Clinton into an agonizing trade-off of black interests for white ones. It is by no means the case, for example, that all of the changes proposed by the congressional Republicans are rejected outright by black Americans. There is considerable evidence, moreover, that many white voters are as alarmed by the severity of cuts in certain programs as are their black neighbors. Clinton has a demonstrated record of addressing the needs of black citizens while reassuring white Americans that their needs will not be sacrificed. If he can sustain this ability to speak across this country’s gaping racial chasm, he will not only set the stage for his own political victory, but, of vastly greater importance, he will contribute to a process of healing America’s most persistent and debilitating ailment.