Clinton Declares ‘Hope Is Back’

President Clinton on Thursday accepted the renomination of his party with an appeal aimed squarely at the middle of the American electorate and a soaring vision of the nation’s future--as well as his own place in history.

“Hope is back in America,” the president proclaimed in the prepared text of his speech.

But Clinton’s moment of triumph was sullied by the overnight resignation of his closest political advisor, Dick Morris, who abruptly left Chicago after reports that he had consorted with a high-priced Washington prostitute as recently as last week and had shared with her sensitive conversations with the president.

The Morris revelations tarnished a Democratic convention that had been meticulously scripted to present the party as the tribune of the American family and the struggling middle class.

Thus began the final campaign of a politician whose career has seen more euphoric heights and dizzying depths than any American public figure since former President Richard Nixon.

In his speech, Clinton reprised the “bridge to the future” theme that Vice President Al Gore had introduced in his address Wednesday night. The language was designed in part to remind listeners that Bob Dole, the 73-year-old Republican nominee, had promised to serve as “a bridge” to return America to the values of its past.

“Tonight, let us resolve to build that bridge to the 21st century, to meet our challenges, protect our basic values and prepare our people for the future,” Clinton said.

“Let us build a bridge to help parents raise their children, to help young people and adults get the education and training they need, to make citizens feel safer on our streets, to help Americans succeed at home and at work, to break the cycle of poverty and dependence, to protect our environment for generations to come and to maintain our world leadership in the face of new threats and new opportunities,” Clinton said.

And, in a rousing reminder of his veto of the Republican budget plan that marked the beginning of his political resurrection last winter, Clinton vowed to block any effort to radically scale back popular government programs.

“As long as I am president, I will never allow cuts that devastate education for our children, pollute our environment, end the guarantee of health care under Medicaid or violate our duty to our parents under Medicare,” Clinton said. “Never.”

Clinton also criticized Dole’s $548-billion plan to reduce income tax rates by 15%, calling it a replay of what he characterized as the failed economic policies of the Reagan administration.

“Do we really want to make the same mistake again, to raise interest rates again, to stop economic growth again, to court recession again, to start piling up another mountain of debt, to weaken our bridge to the 21st century?” Clinton said. “Of course not. We have an obligation to leave our children a legacy of opportunity, not debt.

He then derided Dole’s statement that his tax-cut plan was a bet on the nation’s future.

“So this is one area which I respectfully disagree with my opponent. We should not bet the farm and we certainly shouldn’t bet the country,” Clinton said.

Dismay Over Morris

The until-now smooth-running White House political operation, which seemed at midweek to be coasting toward an easy reelection victory, was thrown into disarray and dismay by the Morris episode.

Officials declined to confirm the report of Morris’ activities, which was carried in the Star tabloid. But the Star’s story, based on an account by the woman herself, was accompanied by photographs of the two together at a Washington hotel in their bathrobes as well as by a photograph of a canceled check that Morris had signed over to her.

Morose White House aides sought Thursday to downplay the damage Clinton would suffer, insisting that it was Clinton and not his widely resented political guru, who was running for president.

They were buoyed by polls showing Clinton leaving Chicago with a lead of between 10% and 15% over Republican challenger Bob Dole.

But it was all too evident that they felt that they were witnessing yet another Clinton catastrophe like those that had so many times in the past threatened to end his quicksilver career. It was the same tabloid that printed the story of Morris’ indiscretions that broke the story of Clinton’s alleged affair with lounge singer Gennifer Flowers that almost sank his 1992 primary campaign.

How much lasting damage the story might cause remains uncertain.

Political analyst Kevin Phillips, for example, argued that because Morris’ resignation would distract attention from the final night of the convention, it would probably reduce the upward “bounce” in the polls that Clinton might otherwise have gotten. But given Clinton’s current lead, he does not need much of a bounce, Phillips noted.

In the long run, “if all the allegations about Clinton’s character haven’t brought him down, allegations about an aide’s character won’t,” Phillips said.

“It’s another Walter Jenkins,” he added, referring to a quite similar incident 32 years ago in which Jenkins, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson’s de facto White House chief of staff, was arrested on an indecent behavior charge in Washington in the fall of 1964.

Delegates Stunned

Despite predictions of lasting political damage, the president went on to win a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater a few weeks later.

In the meantime, however, many convention delegates were stunned by the revelations, which seemed to crystallize the ambivalence many feel about Clinton, a brilliant candidate but an exasperating man who, as even his friends and aides have said, can at once give voice to humanity’s noblest sentiments and keep company with its lowest impulses.

“This could not have come at a worse time,” said California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

While many delegates, anticipating victory in November, had overcome their doubts about Clinton’s newly conservative social and fiscal policies, Clinton has not fully stilled their uneasiness about his character, his steadiness--or his choice of friends.

Morris had few friends in the White House, where most aides considered him untrustworthy, in part because of his past work for conservative Republican candidates. He feuded openly with Deputy Chief of Staff Harold M. Ickes over such policy decisions as Clinton’s signing of the welfare reform bill earlier this month, which Morris supported and Ickes opposed.

Speech Revised

White House aides said that Clinton revised his speech Thursday afternoon in the wake of the Morris revelation in recognition that conventioneers had been ambushed by the news.

Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that Clinton knew the matter had been a “diversion” from the previously successful convention and included language in the final draft to “lift up the spirits” of the delegates.

While Clinton delivered the expected recitation of the achievements of his first four years in office, his focus was chiefly on his intentions and his hopes for a second term.

“Four years from now, we begin a new century full of enormous possibilities and new challenges,” Clinton said. “We must give Americans the tools they need to make the most of their God-given potential. We must make the basic bargain of responsibility and opportunity real for all Americans and we must build a strong and united American community.”

The president spoke at length about expanding educational opportunities through tax breaks, job retraining grants and other incentives. He vowed that even as he strives to balance the federal budget, he would not allow funding for education to suffer.

“If we do these things, every 8-year-old will be able to read. Every 12-year-old will be able to log onto the Internet, every 18-year-old will be able to go to college. And Americans will have the knowledge they need to cross that bridge into the future,” he said.

Two New Proposals

Clinton’s speech contained two new proposals, one aimed at middle-class homeowners, the other designed to reward employers who help people move off welfare rolls into the workplace as the new welfare reform law takes effect.

The first would exclude up to $500,000 in gains from the sale of a home from capital-gains taxes, replacing an exemption that now applies only to homeowners 55 and older and is limited to $125,000 in gains. Taxpayers would be able to take advantage of the exemption every two years.

The measure, which would cost $1.4 billion over the next seven years, would exempt 99% of home sales from capital-gains taxes.

The second proposal, estimated to cost $3.4 billion over seven years, would provide tax credits to businesses who hire people on welfare. Employers could claim a 50% credit on the first $10,000 of wages paid to long-term welfare recipients. The credit would be available for two years and would cover not only wages but training assistance, health care and day-care expenditures for the new workers.

To make up for funding lost to the federal treasury because of the proposals, the administration would eliminate some tax breaks for corporations.

Clinton also repeated his earlier proposals to expand literacy programs, underwrite higher education costs, expand gun control laws and subsidize environmental cleanup efforts.

The president’s speech capped a four-day conclave that was long on sentiment and surprisingly light on partisan politics.

The overall tone, at least in prime time, has been largely nonpartisan, with praise for Dole’s wartime sacrifice and his long service in Congress.

But, as in previous nights, before the network cameras were turned on, one of the party’s liberal stalwarts warmed up the crowd--this time Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Leading the crowd in chants criticizing “that famous Republican trio of reaction--Dole, Kemp and Gingrich,” Kennedy declared Dole “the compliant partner in the so-called Gingrich revolution. . . . Newt Gingrich thought it up but Bob Dole swallowed it--hook, line and sinker.”

And responding in kind to a lengthy catalog of Democratic sins that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas had read out during the GOP convention, Kennedy denounced “the radical wish list of the education-cutting, environment-trashing, Medicare-slashing, choice-denying, tolerance-repudiating, gay-bashing, Social-Security-threatening, assault-rifle-coddling, government-closing, tax-loophole granting, minimum-wage-opposing” Republicans.

Times staff writers Paul Richter, Doyle McManus and Marc Lacey contributed to this story.