Clinton Plays It Cool

By WALTER SHAPIRO

By appearing on The Arsenio Hall Show last week, Bill Clinton may have discovered the formula to revive his stalled campaign: exploit his sax appeal. During the brief rehearsal for the talk show, the visiting saxophone player joked nervously with the band, "If I screw up, play louder." Clinton need not have worried. So what if his wraparound shades were borrowed from an aide, the phosphorescent blue-and-yellow tie came from the show's wardrobe department, and some of the cool was donated by the adoring host? The image that came across on TV was that of a relaxed, self-deprecating candidate ("That's how I learned to inhale -- playing my saxophone") far different from the too-eager-to-please Slick Willie persona of the early primaries.

The challenge facing Clinton is both simple and serious: How does he reintroduce himself to voters enraptured with the mystique of Ross Perot? For years, Clinton had been carefully prepping for a race where he would be the agent of change, the only alternative to the do-nothing status quo of George Bush. Now it is Perot who embodies this anti-Establishment anger, while the Democratic challenger is suddenly relegated to an uncomfortable me-too role as the candidate offering change for the timid voters still loyal to the orthodoxies of two-party politics. As a longtime friend of Clinton puts it, "Bill has to rethink this race because Perot has taken some of the ground that he intended to occupy. But until now Bill has been too tired, and too occupied with the primaries, to rethink anything."

The candidate's physical and mental fatigue is understandable. Last Monday -- the day before Clinton swept California and five other primaries to put him over the top in delegates -- he embarked on a grueling tour of California's media markets. It was the kind of old-fashioned campaign day that probably should be preserved in amber and sent to the Smithsonian because, as Perot has demonstrated, presidential candidates no longer have to put their bodies on the line like this to get TV attention. First stop was the tiny San Joaquin Valley farm town of Kerman, a 40-minute motorcade ride from the Fresno airport. At a lunchtime rally in Oakland, Clinton lapsed into an inadvertent parody of his all-things-to-all-voters style when he declared, "I want you to know that I am a pro-growth, pro-business and pro-labor, pro-education, pro- health care, pro-environment, pro-family, pro-choice Democrat." Finally, the Arkansas Governor ended up back in Los Angeles for a rally at the UCLA campus. Small wonder, after this kind of forced-march campaigning, that a top Clinton aide said, "We've just got to get rid of these three-event, three- airport days."

What accentuates the toll on Clinton is that he is not only the candidate but also the top strategist. So far, the Clinton camp has been remarkably free of the public backbiting that afflicts most campaigns, though there are internal turf battles between longtime loyalists and the Democratic hired guns recruited for the race. But, more important, there is scant evidence that the Clinton campaign has developed a game plan bold enough to regain momentum in the most volatile and unorthodox presidential race in recent U.S. history.

It is fine for senior strategist James Carville to say, "We have to keep on doing what we've been doing. We've just got to do it better. We've let everyone but ourselves define us." It is fine for the campaign to buy network time this month to display Clinton in two or three half-hour town meetings, beginning as early as this week. But is this enough?

Epic change is in the air: Perot could transform the two-party system in as dramatic a fashion as the fall of communism altered geopolitics. All too often, however, Clinton still acts like an old-line Democratic candidate, flying off to a Texas party dinner, courting constituency groups like the American Association of Retired Persons, and even scheduling a trip to Las Vegas next week to address an annual convention of AFSCME, the public employees union. Meanwhile, the selection of a vice-presidential candidate is probably a month away. The Arkansas Governor remains coy on the subject beyond admitting the obvious: "I have quite a long list -- and it's not as long as it once was." (One name crossed out is that of New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, who has convinced Clinton that he genuinely does not want the job.)

In New Hampshire last February, when the airwaves were filled with talk of Gennifer Flowers and draft records, Clinton proved that he was that rare Timex-watch candidate, who could "take a licking but keep on ticking." Now he has sailed through the primaries, averted new scandals and stands on the cusp of the Democratic nomination. Rather than savoring that triumph, Clinton must now confront the highest hurdle of all: he must reach into himself and find a new way to convince the voters that he has the vision, the verve and the vitality to lead a troubled nation.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 974 registered voters taken for TIME/CNN on June 3-4 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 3.1%

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