Hands Wring Over Clinton’s Weekend Splash

President Clinton arrived in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon to hand the Democratic Party’s reins to his vice president, while aides denied that he was trying to hog the political spotlight.

The president, with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea, will spend twice as much time in the city as Vice President Al Gore, the party’s presidential nominee-in-waiting.

Clinton’s itinerary included stops Friday night at the tony Spago restaurant and tonight at a Hollywood-populated fund-raising concert and midnight dinner to boost the first lady’s Senate campaign in New York.

Still, presidential aides and Democratic strategists went out of their way Friday to emphasize that Clinton was neither stealing attention from Gore nor suffering separation anxiety as his tenure nears its end.

“This is California. There’s just about enough of everything to go around,” said Garry South, a political aide to Democratic Gov. Gray Davis who has traffic-copped the respective fund-raising and social agendas of the Clintons as well as Gore’s entourage.

Noting Clinton’s plans to leave town to meet Gore for a torch-passing event Tuesday in Michigan, South said: “By the time this convention is over on Friday, the fact the president was in here having some events the weekend before will be completely forgotten. From Tuesday on, it’s going to be all Al Gore and all Joe Lieberman and that’s what people will take away from this convention.”

The vice president is not scheduled to arrive until Wednesday, a day after Clinton departs, but the program throughout the week will be devoted to Gore.

Although some in the Gore camp are clearly perturbed by the high profile of the president and his wife, insiders insisted that they have kept their focus on producing a successful convention.

“People understand what’s going to happen,” said one Gore strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’ll be fine if we stay on message. If we get diverted, it won’t be fine.”

Another Gore strategist, who has been heavily involved in convention planning, suggested that the president’s appetite for attention and Gore’s struggle to get out from under his shadow are not surprising.

“For 14 months we have dealt with this issue,” the strategist said. “We’re comfortable with it by now. Frankly, to have it any other way would be unrealistic. This guy has been a very successful president for the past eight years, and he deserves to be honored.”

For his part, Clinton threw back his head and laughed Friday when a reporter suggested that Gore was irked by the attention the garrulous Clinton continues to attract. “I’ve never heard him say that,” Clinton said.

Regardless, a spokesman for the president suggested that Clinton’s schedule was being tempered to reflect the sensitivity that has cropped up over whether his larger-than-life political persona might diminish Gore.

Clinton had planned this morning to tape interviews for broadcast on Monday morning talk shows. But White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the interviews had been scrubbed.

Indeed, the White House also canceled a presidential interview with the New York Times after it ran a story drawing attention to Clinton’s busy Los Angeles schedule. There was concern in the Gore camp that Clinton was soaking up attention--and contributions--that might otherwise benefit the vice president.

Clinton has often made clear that only the 22nd Amendment is keeping him from running for a third term. His love of the job overcomes any fatigue from the rigors of the work and frustration with the slings and arrows that come his way.

“Is he having a tough time ceding the limelight? Listen, nothing’s more important to this president than ensuring Al Gore gets elected president. But I think it’s a tough process for him to move off center stage, as it would be for anybody,” said Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton friend and prolific fund-raiser.

“If the president could run again, he’s always said he would run again. He can’t,” McAuliffe said. “He knows it’s coming to an end and he’s prepared for it. But it’s not easy.”

Clinton’s Monday night speech at the convention, cast as a presidential farewell to party loyalists, is likely to focus on three points--all of them common themes of his fund-raising speeches in recent weeks: the progress of the last eight years, the differences between the Democratic and Republican national tickets, and the importance of the election.

Foreshadowing his message at fund-raising party Friday night for Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) at the Century Plaza Hotel, Clinton cited the progress of the past eight years and said that the Republicans “wanted you to believe it all happened by accident.”

“My old daddy used to say if you find a turtle on a fence post, chances are it didn’t get there by accident,” the president said. “I remember when they were in office and in charge of economic policy for 12 years, they took credit if the sun came up in the morning. Now they want you to believe it all just happened by accident.”

Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist, said that Clinton remains a positive force and that beyond the Los Angeles area, few in the country would be aware of his activities here, other than the speech he will deliver at Staples Center.

“The convention is a great opportunity for the president to make clear what a partner Al Gore has been,” he said.

Times staff writer Josh Meyer contributed to this story.