Professor Bill's Class: Political Economy 101 Clinton's summit played well, but his promises are looking harder to keep

IT MIGHT NOT HAVE LURED MANY VIEWERS FROM All My Children. But when it came to furtive subplots, greed, jealousy and spine-chilling intimations of impending disaster, Bill Clinton's televised 19-hour economic talkathon was right up there with daytime's most overwrought soap fare.

On its face, the two-day Conference on the Economy, held in Little Rock, served as a remarkable national teach-in, where 329 economists, corporate executives, labor leaders and other interest-group advocates got a chance to pitch their favorite nostrums to the President-elect. It provided the public with an exhaustive review of the tough choices on taxes and spending that face Clinton and the country. And it also allowed Clinton to present himself in a flattering light: attentive, whip-smart and lip-bitingly empathetic; the reading glasses perched soberly at the end of his bulbous nose lent a touch of presidential gravitas to his boyish looks.

A key subplot of the summit was played out mostly offstage, where Clinton and his aides began to worry about the high cost of the myriad promises that got them elected. In tense sessions before and after the conference, Clinton and his top advisers fretted that his campaign pledge to cut the deficit in half within four years -- while cutting middle-class taxes and spending more on everything from highways to veterans' benefits -- now looks a lot tougher to meet than they expected. Failure to fulfill it could prove as politically damaging to Clinton as was President Bush's "no new taxes" vow.

Clinton's economic advisers showed him charts demonstrating that the deficit in 1996, without any changes, will be more than $100 billion higher than they -- and Bush -- had estimated. Clinton's aides blame the Republican incumbent for underplaying future costs for defense and the thrift bailout, but they also admit cooking their own numbers. New taxes on foreign firms, for example, are now expected to yield only one-fifth of the $15 billion a year that Clinton promised.

Clinton has scheduled private briefings this week to consider some of the tough choices that he gave short shrift during the economic summit: a hike in the gasoline tax, a new national sales tax and a tax on employer-provided medical insurance -- each of which could be rebated to lower- and middle- income taxpayers. Another option: "redefine" Clinton's pledge by vowing to eliminate the deficit by the end of his second term.