Clinton Tries to Change Image

For six years, Americans have resigned themselves to living with two Bill Clintons: the Good Clinton, who balanced the budget, curbed Congress’ excesses and campaigned for racial harmony--and the Bad Clinton, who sometimes indulged a penchant for prevarication, a passion for junk food and an eye for pretty women.

For the last week, the image of the Bad Clinton has been on garish display, thanks to charges that the president had an affair with a 22-year-old intern and sought to conceal it from investigators.

The State of the Union address Tuesday was an attempt to put the Good Clinton back in the spotlight--and to remind Americans what they saw in the man when they elected him in 1992 and 1996.

In short, the president tried to change the subject.

He did not mention the sordid allegations that have filled the nation’s television screens and newspapers for a week. To do so, aides said, would have dignified the charges unduly.

Instead, Clinton argued, the nation should reserve its attention for more important matters, from reforming the Social Security system to providing better education for 3-year-old children.

“This is . . . a time to build, to build the America within our reach,” he declared with apparent confidence and vigor to a House chamber that seemed unnaturally detached from the intrigues that have dominated the capital for a week.

The aim was to present a forceful, vivid image of the Good Clinton--and to let viewers revert to the bargain they made with him on Election Day.

“People will look at him and say he’s doing an incredible job,” predicted Mandy Grunwald, one of Clinton’s 1992 campaign strategists. “Remember that a majority of Americans who voted for Bill Clinton [in 1992] believed, rightly or wrongly, that he dodged the draft and slept with Gennifer Flowers.”

Indeed, the public reached a comfort level with Clinton’s alleged transgressions in Arkansas long ago.

The question now is: Can Clinton persuade the public to respond with equal charity to allegations of misconduct inside the Oval Office--or at least in the study next door?

Initial public opinion polls suggest that Clinton has a fair chance of success, if the evidence against him does not increase.

When people were asked for their overall impression of Clinton, the president’s approval rating dropped markedly: from 59% to 48% in a Los Angeles Times Poll conducted Saturday.

But in the same poll, the public still approved of the way Clinton was doing his job by a healthy 58%, one of highest levels of his presidency.

“The public has been pretty good at this distinction all along,” said Suzanne Garment a scholar of political scandals at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Since people already think there’s a dichotomy between these two things, he has a wonderful opportunity to remind people that the Good Clinton is very good,” she said. “He can buy himself a lot of time that way.”

That was precisely the strategy behind Tuesday’s speech, White House officials acknowledged.

“I think actually the nation is waiting to hear about what the president wants to do to move the economy forward to strengthen this nation for the 21st century,” Clinton advisor Rahm Emanuel said. “ . . . I think actually the American people have divided these two issues, and they don’t expect the State of the Union or, for that matter, education or health care to be put on hold.”

In effect, Clinton’s decision to say nothing about the crisis swirling around him was a defiant declaration that he planned to ignore the issue whenever possible.

Aides said the president would hew to that same strategy in the weeks and months to come: giving speeches, holding meetings, traveling around the country and the world--all the while seeking to give the determined impression that questions of sexual infidelity and criminal investigations weighed but lightly on his mind.

Tuesday’s speech, with its calculated display of determination and high purpose, could well give Clinton a quick boost in the polls.

“It’s the only time all year he gets a full hour of television, unedited; it always gives him an incredible bounce,” Grunwald said. Besides, she noted, a good State of the Union speech “is always studded with 80%-approval proposals.”

Over the longer run, though, Clinton aides are braced for bad bounces on the road ahead.

One advisor, referring to the polls, said: “I’m surprised they’re holding as steady as they are.” The full impact of the controversy, he suggested, may have yet to sink in.

Still, Clinton’s strong political position before last week’s revelations gave him a strong base to appeal for public support.

The president had largely succeeded in capturing the political center by redefining the image of the Democratic Party, seizing credit (as he did Tuesday night) for balancing the budget and--perhaps most important--conveying a sense that he had mastered his job.

“Athletes call it ‘the zone,’ ” Benjamin R. Barber, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, said recently. “The president is in the zone. The zone in politics is the place where realism and ideals come together . . . . He looks strong to people because he’s found the place between the two.”

“He strikes me now as someone who has taken the measure of the presidency and who is at ease with the office and with the bully pulpit that goes with the office,” Michael Sandel, a Harvard University professor of government who attended a dinner Clinton held for scholars to advise him on the State of the Union address, said in agreement.

“It was taken for granted that an important part of his role is to exercise moral leadership,” he added.

The question in the coming months may be whether Clinton can use his undoubted skills in policy and politics to compensate for whatever loss of moral leadership the controversy may exact?

Or has America changed enough that it can forgive its leaders more grievous sins than in past years?

Are Americans, in short, becoming more like the French?

“Now that the Cold War is over, maybe the president can get away without being a model of moral stature,” Garment suggested. “It seems that we can afford Bill Clinton now.”

Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.