The Long Road

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

ONLY 20 MONTHS AGO, GEORGE BUSH was basking in the glow of the Gulf War victory and enjoying the highest approval ratings ever recorded. That he might even stand a chance of losing the presidency seemed improbable; that he might lose to the young (just 44 at the time), virtually unknown Governor of one of the smallest and poorest states in the nation -- well, nobody would have believed it. Yet as the campaign moved into its final week, despite some tightening of the polls, that was precisely what seemed likely to happen.

That Clinton has in fact come so close might easily be ascribed primarily to luck. After all, the heftiest Democrats -- men like Mario Cuomo, Lloyd Bentsen and Dick Gephardt -- decided to sit the election out, leaving Clinton to battle a field of second-stringers for the nomination. Ross Perot, having done much to focus voter discontent with Bush, abruptly pulled out of the race in July, dramatically boosting Clinton's lead in the polls during the Democratic Convention. Bush helped Clinton by handing his own convention over to right- wing extremists and by running a clumsy, unfocused campaign until he hit his stride in the final weeks. Perhaps the greatest stroke of luck for Clinton is that the economic upturn that could have buried his candidacy never materialized.

But Bill Clinton's rise is also the story of a single-minded candidate with a strong sense of message, an indefatigable will and an intuition for the irrational in politics. He is, as adviser Harold Ickes says, "his own campaign manager." He deserves credit for wise decisions such as sticking with his centrist economic program rather than shifting to a more traditionally liberal appeal, and also deserves blame for blunders such as rejecting his aides' advice to call a let-it-all-hang-out press conference to defuse the issue of how he escaped the Vietnam draft. Clinton had many chances to blow it all, and came close to doing so at least twice: during the New Hampshire primary campaign, when he dropped 13 points in four days, to the edge of extinction; and in June, when he had the Democratic nomination locked up but was running behind Perot as well as Bush. In early February columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that "mainline Democratic politicians" considered Clinton to be "one of the walking dead who sooner or later will keel over." That sentiment would be repeated many times until the late-summer polls gave it the lie.

THE RESIDUE OF DESIGN

Instead of keeling over, Clinton went on to prove as few candidates ever have the truth of baseball mogul Branch Rickey's observation that "luck is the residue of design." And design is indeed the word: careful planning going back many years enabled the Governor to position himself adroitly even before his official entry into the race and to develop a strategy both for capitalizing on his breaks and for overcoming the assaults on his character and trustworthiness that, several times, nearly did him in.

Some other qualities also helped enormously. An intuitive feel for the popular mood enabled Clinton to sense early not only that economics would dominate the race but also that voters longed for a candidate who had thought long enough about the problems to formulate detailed plans and talk specifics. (The campaign thus marked a rare convergence of man and moment: Clinton is a born policy wonk who spawns 5- and 6-point plans as instinctively as other pols reach out for hands to shake.) Sheer dogged persistence kept him slogging past low points at which many another campaigner would have given up. In New Hampshire, when the Governor's campaign looked like a collapsing balloon, an aide reported that "his instinct is always to do more": more speeches, more interviews, more TV talk shows, more plunging into crowds. He did -- and it worked, then and later.

Persistence was joined to a stern self-control. Under constant fire, Clinton kept his cool. Throughout the seemingly endless campaign he lost his temper only occasionally, such as the time during the early primaries when Clinton received a false report that Jesse Jackson had endorsed his rival Tom Harkin and went ballistic into an open microphone. Most of the time, Clinton remained ever affable and was never distracted from hammering home, over and over again, the same message: The nation demands change, and I'm the candidate with a plan to produce it. Or, in the now famous wording of the sign that top strategist James Carville hung on the wall of headquarters to explain what the campaign is about: THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

Moreover, the Governor, for all his policy-wonkness, exhibited a genuine love for and total engagement in the political process. His wife Hillary and aides were often hard pressed to persuade him to catch some sleep. Clinton frequently wanted to go on to yet another rally and make another speech well past midnight, then sit up talking strategy with his campaign team almost till dawn. He spoke so incessantly, even while troubled with allergies, that much of the nation heard his voice become increasingly hoarse. Preparing for the first TV confrontation with Bush and Perot on Oct. 11, in fact, some aides were worried that "Bill's voice will go in the middle of the debate," as one put it. As tens of millions of viewers know, it did not happen.

PARADISE WITHOUT PAIN?

Most of these traits will obviously serve Clinton well if he does move into the Oval Office. But some others are more useful for a campaigner than for a President -- and in fact are giving Bush at long last an opening for attack. Clinton hates to alienate anyone and has a pronounced tendency to promise everything to everybody. His standard speech used to contain this all- embracing passage: "We can be pro-growth and pro-environment, we can be pro-business and pro-labor, we can make government work again by making it more aggressive and leaner and more effective at the same time, and we can be pro-family and pro-choice."

Lately this phrasing has been dropped. An aide explains, "It sounds like we - want to be all things to all people, and voters just don't believe it." But though the words have changed, the spirit has not. Clinton still tends to promise more than the fine print of his own programs will support. He generally shuns any talk of sacrifice -- despite a pointed invitation from Jim Lehrer, moderating the final TV debate, to do so. His speeches hold out a glittering vision of prosperity and social progress to be attained with no pain for anyone except the privileged elite earning more than $200,000 a year. But a President cannot avoid making decisions that will alienate some people, and the disappointment to some voters who buy his vision of a painless paradise may be intense.

A somewhat more ambiguous quality might be called either adaptability or slipperiness. During the campaign, it has enabled the candidate to emphasize different parts of his message for different audiences, and occasionally switch signals. Though Clinton chastised Paul Tsongas for suggesting that a middle-class tax cut was the linchpin of the Governor's economic program, Clinton made it sound exactly like that when talking early in the campaign to the hard-pressed voters of New Hampshire. Later, as it became increasingly obvious that the size of the cut he first proposed could not be reconciled with his promises to reduce the deficit, the Arkansan greatly scaled it back.

More recently still, questioners have asked whether the Democrat's ambitious plans for spending on roads, bridges, job training, welfare reform and other worthy projects would not require a middle-class tax increase to finance. While refusing to make any read-my-lips pledge, Clinton asserts that he will instead scale back some of his spending plans if his defense cuts and revenue measures do not bring in as much money as he expects. In short, he will not necessarily be bound by the specifics of his many proposals. That attitude could serve a President well up to a point; it is certainly preferable to a stubborn refusal to change come hell, high water or ruinous deficits. But it could too easily degenerate into a confusing and self-defeating backing and filling.

It even could, at long last, deny Clinton the White House. After getting nowhere with various other lines of attack, Bush has begun, though possibly too late, to score with a new charge: Clinton is a waffler who takes every side of every issue, a spendthrift liberal who will eventually tax the daylights out of the middle class because he cannot finance his ambitious * schemes any other way; altogether, a man who cannot be trusted in the White House. The attack is overstated, but Clinton has virtually invited it by putting forward plans whose numbers do not always add up.

THE MASTER STRATEGIST

In any case, for good or ill, Clinton the candidate is closer to Clinton the private man than almost any other campaigner of recent memory. The image the Governor projects on the stump and on TV is emphatically not designed by handlers. Clinton himself, powerfully aided by his wife Hillary, is the source of the message and the big-picture strategy. He employs speechwriters but rewrites the speeches heavily. So much so that despite the best efforts of the original drafters to shorten his acceptance speech to the July convention, it still took 55 minutes to deliver. Main reason: Clinton kept rewording their work, and every time he rewrote a passage it came out longer.

By his own testimony, Clinton began thinking about running for President as a teenager. Indications are that he started seriously pondering what would be required for a winning race early in 1987. As a successful Governor of Arkansas, he already figured in speculation, and when he summoned his closest advisers to Little Rock, he was widely expected to announce his candidacy. Instead, he announced he would not run. Gary Hart had just been driven from the race by the scandal over Donna Rice, and Clinton well knew that rumors of womanizing had been swirling around him too. By 1989 Clinton was considering the pros and cons of running for a fifth consecutive gubernatorial term in 1990: on the one hand, a sitting Governor could better raise money for a presidential bid; on the other hand, he seemed bored with state issues and worried about losing. "Every time I've run for Governor," Clinton told a reporter at the time, "it has been a referendum on the question of change versus no change. Sooner or later, the forces in this state opposed to change are bound to win."

Clinton did run and win again in 1990, and that same year he became chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist organization that gave him a platform for addressing the national press as to what kind of Democratic candidate might finally break the long Republican lock on the White House. The picture -- surprise! -- was a kind of idealized self-portrait: a nontraditionalist who could win back the alienated white middle class by repudiating tax-and-spend, something-for-nothing policies and stressing / economic growth to be achieved by heavy government investment in job-creating activities.

In late August 1991, Clinton and Hillary decided to appear together the next month at one of the weekly breakfasts hosted by Christian Science Monitor columnist Godfrey Sperling, at which influential Washington reporters question prominent politicians. One reason: they thought the rumors of infidelity might come up, and this would afford them a chance to start defusing such stories. It happened as they foresaw; they readily affirmed that their marriage had been through some shaky times, but insisted it was now rock solid. Implicit message from Clinton: Even if I did commit adultery, so what? It's in the past, and so long as Hillary is satisfied about that and will stick by me, it's no one else's business.

Even before Clinton announced his candidacy on Oct. 3, 1991, parts of the national press were hailing him as a potential campaigner who knew exactly what he wanted to say and had a plan. Eager to impose a pattern on what then seemed a shapeless race, some political reporters even began building up Clinton as potential chief rival to New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who was then expected to be the front runner. Some of Clinton's aides wanted to launch a pre-emptive attack on Cuomo as the kind of ultraliberal who always lost, but the Arkansan vetoed the idea: the Hamlet of Albany might yet drop out, and there was no point in saying anything that might rile him enough to make him want to fight. When Cuomo did decide just before Christmas to stay out, the press was stuck with anointing Clinton as the new front runner more or less by default.

THE SURVIVOR

It nearly all came unglued in New Hampshire, though. When Gennifer Flowers' charges that she had had a 12-year affair with Clinton became public, the Governor ordered his entire staff to gather in Manchester immediately. They turned the local Days Inn into a kind of makeshift dorm. Staffers doubled up in rooms and stuffed towels in the doors so that they would not lock; any room could be opened for an impromptu meeting at any time. Aides quickly began negotiating for TV time to answer the charges. Clinton and Hillary went on 60 Minutes and in effect repeated their Sperling breakfast performance. One incident that did not get onscreen: while the interview was being filmed, a bank of lights held high on a pipe came crashing to the floor about a foot from Hillary. Clinton immediately grabbed his wife and pulled her to him; they ^ embraced for about 30 seconds. The incident seemed to break the tension; both were more relaxed and confident afterward. The campaign had also lined up an interview spot on Nightline, which had been kept on hold until a spot on 60 Minutes was assured. Deciding it would be preferable not to dispatch a white man to defend Clinton, aides instead sent Mandy Grunwald, who was relatively new to the campaign but did a poised and impressive job.

Just as the campaigners were congratulating themselves on surviving that flap, though, the first stories about how he had stayed out of the draft in 1969 hit. On Feb. 12 Clinton suddenly called a press conference in a hangar at the Manchester airport and handed out a faded Xerox copy of the now famous letter written by the young Clinton expressing his agony over the Vietnam War. Someone had leaked the original to Nightline; Clintonites had been able to get hold only of the one faxed copy, which was hard to read in the dim light of the hangar. Carville had argued vehemently that the campaign had to make the letter public before Nightline did. "Guvnor," Carville insisted in his Cajun accent, "this letter is your friend."

Clinton was to go on Nightline that evening to defend the letter. But he insisted on going through with a rally at Elks Club Lodge No. 184 in Dover, New Hampshire, only three hours before his scheduled appearance. Many another politician would have canceled the appearance or mumbled through a standard stump speech. Clinton, his voice hoarse, told an audience of about 300 supporters that if they would stick with him through that trial, "I'll remember you until the last dog dies." It was a deeply emotional appeal that those present recall with awe, and an example of the sheer persistence and indomitable will that enabled him to survive that crucial first primary.

What Clinton did not accomplish, however, was to put the draft issue to rest. His statements in New Hampshire were the first of a long series of incomplete and sometimes conflicting remarks that were to continue piecemeal throughout the campaign. In April aides urged him to call a press conference at which he would answer questions until reporters had nothing left to ask; he refused, in what now appears to have been a major blunder. Clinton did eventually develop a fairly effective answer of sorts: right through the fall debates with Bush and Perot, he has argued that voters should be far more concerned with how a candidate proposes to heal the ailing economy than with "character" issues. Many indeed are, and the Gennifer Flowers episode has apparently settled into a larger perspective. But the draft issue still continues to fuel a widespread distrust of Clinton.

Even in New Hampshire, Clinton only survived. Though he described himself on primary night as "the Comeback Kid," he ran second with 25% of the vote. The winner, Tsongas, went on to victories in Massachusetts and Maryland, and for a while was thought likely to come close in Georgia and possibly even win Florida. Strategist Carville says that shortly after New Hampshire "I was just as scared as I have ever been in politics." Tsongas, however, was already running out of money and energy; reporters who traveled on his campaign plane still remember how utterly exhausted he looked.

Clinton had always been favored to win the cluster of Southern and Border State primaries in early March, since that was his home region. In Florida he showed a harsh streak in his character, assailing Tsongas most unfairly -- but effectively -- for supposedly planning to cut Social Security benefits.

Clinton also had learned from Al Gore's failure in 1988. Gore had scored well in the Dixie primaries, Clinton told his aides, but then faltered because he had not developed any plan to follow up on that success. In contrast, Clinton from the very first had poured money and organizational effort into Illinois. Later, against the advice of some aides, he found time on six critical days to stump in Michigan. If he could follow up a Southern sweep with big March victories in those important industrial states, he figured, he could sew up the nomination.

Almost. That strategy did knock out Tsongas, leaving only Jerry Brown to carry the Anybody-but-Clinton banner. Brown himself was no threat, but if he could have bloodied Clinton enough in New York and Pennsylvania, he might have kept many uncommitted delegates from joining Clinton, prompted some late- starting candidates to jump in, and kept alive the possibility of a brokered convention. At this point, however, Clinton proved the value of having developed and touted a comprehensive economic program. Aside from some other stupid errors, Brown pinned all his hopes on an eccentric proposal for a flat tax that even some of his supporters had trouble swallowing. Clinton trounced the Californian in New York and Pennsylvania and in effect locked up the nomination.

THE JUNE TURNAROUND

The nomination, but certainly not the election. By June, Clinton's campaign had hit rock bottom. Perot had entered the race, and for a time drew so much attention as to push Clinton almost out of sight. While Perot rocketed in the polls, Clinton sank to a bad third, pulling only 25%. On top of that, the campaign had run $4 million into debt. Somewhat surprisingly, though, that proved the easiest problem to fix. Aides whomped up a direct-mail campaign that quickly raised the money.

Perot was, and became again, a tougher problem. The Governor rejected any idea of adopting a more traditionally liberal program in hopes of holding enough of the Democrats' core constituency -- perhaps 35% of the vote -- to eke out victory in a three-man race. Clinton insisted on sticking with his broadly based centrist program and was quickly -- though temporarily -- rewarded. Not only did Perot quit the race, as some in the Clinton camp had rather wistfully predicted; he did it on July 16, only hours before Clinton delivered his acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention. For good measure, the mercurial Texan praised the way the Democratic Party had "revitalized itself." Even after he re-entered the campaign on Oct. 1, Perot appeared to be helping more than hurting Clinton, who returned the favor by not attacking him and even praised Perot for focusing public attention on the deficit. During the debates, the Texan aimed nearly all his sharpest barbs at Bush, while in effect defending the Democrat against the President's attacks on the draft issue by contending that it really no longer mattered what Clinton had done in 1969.

Clinton and his aides made a number of other critical June moves that pulled the campaign out of its doldrums. The candidate issued a new economic program, titled "Putting People First," late in the month. It served to refocus public attention on Clinton as the candidate offering specific ideas, at the very time Perot was coming under increasing fire for talking only vague generalities. "Perot's biggest mistake was not releasing a plan of his own," says a Clinton insider. "If he had, it's possible we might have ended up being the third candidate in the race." (Perot's advisers did eventually produce a highly detailed plan -- but only after the Texan's July 16 dropout.)

It was also in June that Clinton (with heavy prodding from Hillary) reorganized his staff. Until then, the campaign structure had so many fancy titles and overlapping duties that decisions had to be made by consensus -- or not at all. Carville, who admitted that he had often been "disengaged" since the New York primary, helped shape the re-organization by doing what for him was the unthinkable: he wrote a memo. Titled "the Clinton Action Team," the document outlined what would become the famous quick-response war room, designed to crank out swift replies to any Republican charges. Clinton belatedly made it clear that the campaign's headquarters would continue to be in Little Rock, despite the loud objections of some aides who would have preferred any of several more cosmopolitan locations (Carville's choice, for example, was Atlanta). The aides now admit that remaining in the Arkansas capital was an inspired idea; there the campaign team operated as a self- contained community with a gung-ho, no-frills atmosphere that some have likened to a boot camp.

An important personnel shift involved Susan Thomases, who had nominally been head of Hillary Clinton's personal staff but had annoyed others by sometimes abrasive forays onto their turf. For example, she blamed Stan Greenberg for a poll that included questions about Hillary's liabilities, which had led the pollster to write a memo about "the Hillary problem." Thomases in June was given the powerful but narrowly defined job of campaign scheduler.

Two largely symbolic moves in June further helped Clinton reappear on TV in a favorable light. Addressing a meeting of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, Clinton denounced "racist" remarks by rap singer Sister Souljah, who had been on a panel the day before (the remarks, which appeared to advocate killing whites, had actually been made in an interview somewhat earlier). Jackson, who had not been informed of what Clinton intended to say, was furious; he decried it as a "Machiavellian" move intended to appeal to conservative whites. The strategic appraisal, though not the overheated rhetoric, was sound. Clinton was in fact emphasizing his independence from the special interests, militant blacks among them, that had seemed to exercise so much power in the party as to frighten away many middle-class white voters who became the famous Reagan Democrats. Jackson's interest in keeping the fight alive, however, was one he could not make public; in a private meeting between the two to iron out their differences over Sister Souljah, Clinton told Jackson that he would not be considered for Vice President.

Clinton went on at the convention to deftly disarm Jackson as a potential troublemaker. Here again, the Arkansan fell into some luck. Jackson was another of the prominent Democrats who decided early on not to run in 1992; had he made the race and come into the convention with the masses of delegates he commanded in 1984 and 1988, he might easily have caused Clinton headaches as splitting as those he gave Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. But with no delegates at all this year, Jackson could rely only on his clout as a senior black leader, and it was not enough to mount any challenge to Clinton or even wangle a large role at the convention or in the campaign.

Jackson this time would not be allowed to turn one night of the convention into a rally overshadowing in enthusiasm any demonstration for the candidate. Blacks did put on a "Don't Mess with Jesse" rally, but it was held at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, safely out of view of national TV. Jackson was further informed that he could not, as in earlier conventions, withhold his endorsement to bargain over a campaign role. Politely and without making any threats, party chairman Ron Brown, who had been Jackson's 1988 convention chief, and Clinton aide (and Jackson friend) Harold Ickes told Jackson that he would have to obey the same rule as all other would-be convention orators: endorse Clinton formally and in advance. No endorsement, no speech. Grudgingly, Jackson complied and has hardly been heard from since.

Mandy Grunwald, Clinton's advertising consultant, had long been pushing unconventional media appearances for the candidate, with Clinton's ready approval. In June, Grunwald scored her greatest success by convincing skeptics in the campaign that the candidate should appear on the Arsenio Hall Show -- not only to talk but to play the saxophone. Hillary Clinton, who had been impressed with Hall ever since she saw him handle an audience of inner-city kids in the aftermath of the L.A. riots, strongly backed the idea; her husband went along and began rehearsing in secret. He slipped away from the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, his headquarters during the campaign for the California primary, to the beachfront Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, where he tootled away on a balcony. A controversy broke out in his entourage over whether he should or should not wear wraparound dark glasses on the show. The final decision was not made until Clinton was actually striding onto the stage. Paul Begala handed Clinton his own glasses then and the candidate put them on. The act got Clinton badly needed front-page coverage around the country and allowed him to show the friendly, relaxed and engaging side of his personality, which had not been much in evidence since the early primaries.

Whatever the exact combination of causes, Clinton was again on a roll as the July convention approached. Having squelched any possible controversy well in advance (with the minor exception of some showboating by Jerry Brown and his delegates), the candidate turned the meeting, in New York City's Madison Square Garden, into a display of a reformed party that had healed its incessant factional splits. It was an even better display of the Clinton camp's to-the-last-detail planning and iron control. Some examples: "loser's night" was scrapped. At previous conventions this had been one more moment of glory on prime-time TV for past Presidents, failed nominees and those defeated in the primary campaigns, but Clinton and his team considered it an unwanted reminder of factionalism and failure. This year all such speakers, and any others who might have been embarrassing, were put on outside prime time or when much of the nation was watching baseball's All-Star Game rather than the convention. Delegates, as they arrived on the floor Monday, were given cue cards listing "talking points" to be made in radio, TV or newspaper interviews, so that all Democrats would be putting out the same message.

The convention also illustrated -- though far offstage -- Hillary Clinton's role as something close to a co-campaign manager for her husband. While she is not in charge of anything specific, she gets in on many decisions, frequently helping to cut through confusion and bring rambling discussions to a focus. Clinton has a tendency to listen to everyone interminably and let discussions drag. Hillary, says one of her advisers, is frequently the one to say, "O.K., we've had enough discussion, let's get this resolved." Betsey Wright, long Clinton's chief of staff and now a sort of "secretary of defense" for the campaign, formulating quick answers to any attack on Clinton's record, adds that while Bill usually determines what needs to be done, Hillary is often the one who sees to it that someone specific is assigned to carry out the task. Before the convention, Bill asked Hillary to firm up the list of speakers. She quizzed various party officials in her prosecutorial style, wanting to hear good arguments to justify every choice. Says Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a Hollywood producer and friend of Hillary's: "She's very savvy about people. She's very savvy about what makes ((Bill)) look good. And she's very savvy about the people who make him look good."

The big decision -- the choice of a vice-presidential candidate -- however, was Bill Clinton's alone. How he made it, says one aide, illustrates how he is likely to make decisions in the White House -- if he gets there. His method is to solicit ideas from many friends and aides and often virtually to assign a particular associate the task of arguing for or against one particular choice. The aide in question, who had for a time been watching Tsongas on the campaign trail, began getting late-night calls from Clinton, who would ask, "O.K., why should Paul Tsongas not be my running mate?" Clinton would then merely listen, without comment, while the aide made his argument.

Tsongas did not make the final list of six candidates: Harris Wofford, who had pulled an enormous upset by winning a Pennsylvania senatorial election in 1991; Florida Senator Bob Graham; West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller; Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton; Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, a war-hero opponent of Clinton's in the early primaries; and Al Gore. The Tennessee Senator seemed an unlikely choice. A Southerner from a neighboring state, he hardly gives the ticket much balance, and Clinton had refused Gore's bid for support in Gore's 1988 presidential campaign. This time, though, Clinton developed such deep rapport with Gore in a 90-minute meeting that he picked the Tennessean immediately. It turned out an inspired choice. Not only Bill and Al, but Hillary and Tipper Gore, got along so well that they campaigned for a while as a team, impressing friendly crowds as two engaging couples on what looked at times like a happy double date.

The final stress of the convention was on presenting a virtual biography of Clinton in film and speeches. It was necessary, says Carville, because focus- group research had found that many voters had no idea that Clinton had come from a poor family in Hope, Arkansas, and had had an alcoholic stepfather; they thought that a rich father had got him into politics. The bio might have seemed corny to some observers, but it and the thunderous reception Clinton and his family received when they paid a dramatic visit to the convention floor on Wednesday night put the capstone on a remarkable transformation. The candidate who a few weeks earlier had been drawing only about a quarter of the total vote in polls now had a lead of more than 10 points, which quickly swelled to 24 points.

Clinton was not satisfied. He remembered vividly that Dukakis had come out of the 1988 convention with another impressive lead (17 points), but suffered a fatal loss of momentum by frittering away August without doing any effective campaigning. Thomases and campaign manager David Wilhelm pushed the idea of the bus tours; Clinton seized on it quickly as a means of building on the convention momentum and furthering his penchant for unconventional campaigning. Plans for the first tour, a six-day jaunt from New York City to St. Louis, Missouri, were being drawn even before the convention met.

The bus tours, which will grow to seven this Monday, were an enormous success. They drew an unsubtle contrast between the patrician Bush's alleged loss of contact with heartland America and the Clinton-Gore close-to-the- people pitch. The journeys cemented the relationship between the candidates and their wives; as Tipper Gore put it, "We were able to tell stories and get to know each other." They also drew huge and enthusiastic crowds, pumped up partly by local journalists who could not afford to fly on a campaign plane but eagerly seized on a rare chance to follow candidates around in the flesh. Some local radio stations took to beginning broadcasts about the day's schedule three hours before the first turn of the wheels, updating continually with bulletins on the tour's progress. The enthusiasm communicated itself to the candidates, who responded in kind; not only Clinton but Gore, who can be wooden and repetitious in a formal setting, relaxed and campaigned in an easy, friendly manner.

THE END GAME

While the Democrats barnstormed Middle America, Bush wasted August. The President was late getting organized, late appointing James Baker to pull his floundering campaign together, late settling on a theme -- a good three months behind on almost everything. In contrast to the lift Clinton got out of the Democratic Convention, Bush got almost none from the Republican meeting. In fact, August set a pattern that held until almost the end of the fall campaign and very nearly turned it from main event to nonevent. Right through the first two debates the story was Clinton holding a big lead, Bush flailing about futilely in an attempt to catch up.

% Clinton's debate performance was equal to the demand, if not much more. He managed to curb his pet-student tendency to show off all he knows and try to cram six points into an answer to a question that really requires only two. He was dignified and well informed, had his points in order and managed to sound and look at least as presidential as Bush. Though Perot's witticisms clearly won the first debate, Clinton was equally clearly the winner of the second, partly because it followed a format that he suggested and had already mastered: questions from an invited studio audience of selected uncommitted voters.

But toward the end, the candidate who had run an almost flawless campaign since June began to coast on his lead, doing and saying nothing to stir things up. Smelling victory, aides began to jockey more vigorously for position, and some eyed jobs in a Clinton Administration. But when Begala crowed to reporters after the first debate that "it's over," an angry candidate chastised him. And in the third and final debate, Bush finally found a focus and intensity that had eluded him and that he has carried into the homestretch. Perot, as maverick as ever, was scoring with what amounted to half-hour, chart-filled TV commercials; Bush was coming up in the polls, though not necessarily in likely electoral votes; Clinton was campaigning hard again, warning his followers that they dare not become so complacent as not to vote. Though the denouement seemed newly uncertain, two things were relatively sure: to get even this far, given where he started, Clinton has waged a remarkable drive. And if he does hold on to win, his campaign will enter the textbooks as a model of how to prevail on the road to the White House.

With reporting by Margaret Carlson/Washington, Priscilla Painton and Walter Shapiro with Clinton