Clinton's People

By MICHAEL DUFFY LITTLE ROCK

Al From doesn't look happy to be back in power. Bill Clinton's chief domestic policy planner for the transition appears to be under siege: the austere Little Rock office that From shares with two assistants is strewn with unsolicited faxes, dotted with little yellow Post-it notes and littered with long-forgotten telephone messages stamped URGENT. From endures surprise visits from special-interest pleaders, insinuating state party officials and reconnoitering reporters. After politely thanking another briefcase-toting visitor for the 75-page list of "action items," From sighs. "This," he says wearily, "is my life."

Yet From is enjoying a vindication of a kind. During the 1980s, he and a small band of Democratic centrists pioneered many of the "new" ideas that would eventually help elect the first Democratic President since 1976. Liberals and some party leaders who scorned the From crowd's unconventional approaches to economics, defense spending and education now find themselves surrounded by moderates whom From has sprinkled throughout the transition team. After nearly a decade of brokering ideas, From is now wielding power. "He's the intellectual godfather of Clinton's candidacy," admitted a liberal transition official, "and he is going to get some of the spoils."

Not bad for a man who spent the past eight years wandering in the political wilderness. After Ronald Reagan routed Walter Mondale in 1984, From and a group of mostly Southern Democrats organized the Democratic Leadership Council (D.L.C.). The group wanted to yank the party to the right, certain that Democrats could regain the White House only with fewer appeals to special interests and more to the predominantly white, politically moderate, middle- class voters. Pundits predicted the council's early demise, and Jesse Jackson derided it as "the Southern White Boys Club." But its diagnosis of the party's ills seemed to be borne out by the Democrats' lopsided Electoral College defeats. "We were losing," From recalled, "because the people weren't buying the message we were selling."

After George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988, From helped create the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank for putting flesh on the leadership council's ideas. The institute churned out dozens of well-reasoned papers on topics ranging from welfare reform to national service, catching the attention of party leaders and presidential aspirants as well as some nervous Bush White House officials.

In 1990 Clinton took over as chairman of the D.L.C., gathering the proposals into a 44-page agenda titled the New American Choice. With its emphasis on private-sector growth, personal responsibility and community service, the booklet anticipated many of Clinton's campaign proposals, as well as the party's 1992 platform. Notes Paul Begala, a top Clinton strategist: "Every oyster needs a grain of sand to make a pearl. Al From is the grain of sand that made the Clinton candidacy."

Others would call From the sand in the party's shoe. A curmudgeonly Indiana native, he is tolerated more than he is loved. From grew up in South Bend, graduated from Northwestern University with a journalism degree and went to work for Lyndon Johnson in the war on poverty. An anomaly in Democratic politics -- he is neither pollster, nor consultant, nor academic, nor public official -- From is responsible less for crafting the leadership council's proposals than for selling them. From raised the money, organized the conferences, hired the experts and started 30 council chapters nationwide. "Al is the impresario," says Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the institute and a transition operative. "He's really a public policy entrepreneur."

Now that many of those policies have triumphed, From is marketing the people to carry them out. Kamarck is in charge of campaign-finance issues; deputy Bruce Reed is a former leadership-council policy director; William Galston, a + longtime council luminary, is developing the national-service proposal and helping out on family and children's issues. Three weeks ago, Clinton named former South Carolina Governor Richard Riley, a D.L.C. supporter, as the transition personnel director. Party liberals began to worry out loud about, as one of them put it, "ideological purity tests."

That's unlikely under Clinton. It is a measure of the President-elect's elasticity that both liberals and moderates believe they own the Arkansas Governor's heart and mind. Clinton has shrewdly recruited officials from both wings, creating an internal tension that will probably force him to slalom back and forth in the White House to keep everyone happy. "Clinton has rewarded the moderates and rewarded the liberals," said a member of the latter camp. "He isn't tipping his hand as yet." The prominence of From and his minions in Clinton's operation, however, suggests that one side in the tug-of-war is already winning some rope.