Clinton Avoids Partisan Politics on Visit to N.H.

President Clinton came to New Hampshire on Friday on his first political trip of 1996 and almost utterly avoided politics.

In visits to schools, an arts center and an aerospace plant, Clinton studiously ignored the intense competition for the Republican primary here and barely mentioned his own desire for reelection.

Instead, he focused on hailing improvements in the New Hampshire and national economies in his three years in office and the importance of education in the evolving economy of the future.

“Four years ago when I was here the unemployment rate was over 7%; today it’s almost down to 3%,” he said. “So what we have to do is to take this energy that’s out there . . . and figure out how to spread those opportunities to everyone.”

Clinton was thus following a script written months ago that calls for him to spend the early months of 1996 being “presidential” and rising above mere grubby politics.

It is a luxury allowed by Clinton’s lack of a Democratic challenger and the more-than-adequate job his Republican rivals are doing of beating up on each other.

Clinton timed his two-day visit to take advantage of the large press contingent already in place in New Hampshire to cover the Republican bloodletting. He’ll be back in the state the weekend before the primary.

Among the GOP candidates, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander was on the attack in New Hampshire, bashing publishing magnate Steve Forbes over his wealth. Meanwhile, in Iowa, Forbes and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm traded barbs.

Clinton managed to steal a bit of the limited air time on New England television stations, although he offered little in the way of political passion.

Clinton’s major speech of the day, at the Concord Center for the Arts, was “presidential” almost to the point of dullness. He recited most of the themes from last week’s State of the Union speech, rousing the invitation-only crowd of about 800 students, teachers and parents to applause less than a dozen times in a 30-minute address.

Clinton made a passing nod to New Hampshire’s role as kingmaker in presidential politics early in the speech--although he is a notable exception. He is the only president to be elected without first winning the New Hampshire primary since 1952--when politicos identified the primary as a key contest. He finished second in the 1992 Democratic primary.

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“Four years ago, I think the most valuable experience for me in New Hampshire,” he said, “was not just surviving and going on to be nominated and win, but what I learned about America from the people of New Hampshire.”

He added that “genuine dialogue” of town meetings and quiet conversations “rebuke the loud slogans and the harsh conflicts and so much of modern political life which sheds more heat than light.”

Most of the speech concerned the importance of education in preparing the next generation for the technology-driven economy of the 21st century. He returned to the theme at the Sanders defense electronics facility in Nashua, where he discussed the administration’s school-to-work job training programs.

He never mentioned his Republican rivals nor did he appeal for votes. “The president is president, not a candidate,” said White House deputy chief of staff and de facto campaign manager, Harold M. Ickes.

Clinton did, however, feel compelled to appear in New Hampshire to extol the accomplishments of his three years in office, although he did not answer his Republican critics directly.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole predicted as much Thursday at a Nashua car dealership when he said, “President Clinton thinks he can talk right and govern left. He’ll probably come up here and sound like Ronald Reagan.”

“We’ve got a lot of people running around on the Republican side who say nasty things about the president,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Friday.

The central point of Clinton’s New Hampshire appearances was that despite improvements in the overall economy, many Americans remain anxious about their personal futures.

“How could things be so good and people be worried?” Clinton asked rhetorically in Concord. “The truth is, it makes perfect sense. When you upset an established pattern and you open all kinds of new possibilities, the people that aren’t very well fitted at the moment for those possibilities are likely to get pushed down.”

Aides said that attempting to explain and resolve this contradiction will be the “touchstone” of the Clinton reelection campaign.

“He’s trying to walk a fine line on the economy,” Ickes said. He added that extending the benefits of the growing economy to all and strengthening the nation’s educational system are the administration’s “unfinished business.”

The strategy, Ickes added, was to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate and of the nation’s income structure.

It will be a national rather than a regional appeal, although Clinton plans to contest the election in states that have in most recent presidential races voted Republican. New Hampshire--which Clinton won in 1992 after 28 years of GOP victories--is one of them. Another is Kentucky, which Clinton visited last week.

In all, Clinton strategists believe, 40 states will be competitive in the fall. The Clinton campaign is ceding only the deep South and the Great Plains to the Republicans.

While Clinton largely avoided partisan politics Friday, he reverted to form outside the Walker Elementary School in Concord, the day’s first stop. There he worked the crowd along State Street and held up his first baby of the 1996 campaign and embraced little Michael Blazon, 4 months old.

Among the Republicans, Forbes seemed to be the target on Friday for GOP rivals. Opponent Alexander said the multimillionaire publisher couldn’t win a mayoral race without his family’s money.

“Steve Forbes has never done anything but inherit a magazine from his father,” Alexander said during a morning radio interview.

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In Iowa, Gramm cited Forbes’ support for a national health-care plan 23 years ago as evidence that the publisher is out of step with Republican voters.

“I believe when people look at the Forbes record, they are going to see there are two Steve Forbeses,” Gramm said. “One is the conservative of the slick TV commercials. The other is the moderate and the liberal that writes magazine articles.”

Gramm cited an editorial Forbes wrote in 1973 for Forbes magazine in which he supported a health-care plan being pushed in Congress by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and others. The plan called for nationalized insurance run by a federal health security board.

Forbes, also in Iowa, said during a radio interview that he did briefly support the Kennedy plan--when he was 25 and just out of college.

“But unlike some in public life, I changed my mind very quickly,” Forbes said. “I realized very quickly that would be a disaster and so, for the past 20 years, I’ve been fighting government encroachment.”