RIDING THE BACKLASH

By Richard Stengel

AT 1 P.M. LAST TUESDAY, RETIRED General Colin Powell was dutifully signing books at a Wal-Mart in suburban Fort Worth when he noticed that the line of eager buyers appeared distracted. He was nonplussed, like a sergeant whose troops had fallen out without an order to do so. For a long moment in that cavernous mall in Texas, Powell seemed to be the only person in America who was unaware of what was happening in a courtroom in Los Angeles.

The O.J. Simpson verdict last week not only overshadowed Powell's barnstorming will-he-or-won't-he book tour but also distracted national attention from the President's veto of a congressional budget proposal, the Republican plan to cut Medicare and the strenuous antics of all the other real, imagined or longed-for candidates for the presidency, most of whom are not getting all that much attention anyway. But the question on the mind of politicos was not who planted a certain glove but whether the verdict will spur a white backlash that could affect the presidential campaign--and especially the putative candidacy of that fellow autographing books in Texas.

"It's almost impossible to talk about it," said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, "without being smeared by it." Reaction to the verdict raised the familiar visage of the Angry White Male (now joined by the Angry White Female, outraged by the jury's soft-pedaling of domestic abuse). "The verdict is going to play out in the subconscious minds of critical groups," he said, like the white working class, defined as couples earning about $25,000 a year, the same voters who shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1994. Such voters may see the verdict as a form of judicial affirmative action, and punish any candidate they regard as catering to minorities. "To them," he said, "the verdict was a travesty."

The advice of most strategists was, Say nothing, and if you must say something, be neutral or at least soothing. Only California Republican Bob Dornan, who has nothing to lose, was brazen: "I think it was a racist decision." Pat Buchanan, the candidate many say is the product of white anger, stoked that resentment: "I don't respect the verdict because I think it was wrong." Bob Dole was empathic: "It is very important at this time that we use all our energies to find ways to understand each other." Lamar Alexander tried to have it both ways: "I believe it is important that we support our system of trial by jury, even if we have great doubts about an individual result." Jesse Jackson made a curious suggestion, urging Simpson to turn his fame "to a positive use" by launching a drive against domestic violence.

At a few minutes before 1 p.m., President Clinton left the Oval Office--which does not have a television set--to catch the verdict in his secretary's office. Somber but showing no surprise, Clinton issued an oddly flat statement about the need to respect the judicial system. Some of his aides, notably George Stephanopoulos, urged him to make a broader statement about race relations, but others preached caution. He opted instead for telling USA Today in a short interview on Thursday that it would be a "great mistake" if the verdict further divided the country.

The nature of the presumed backlash was most succinctly summarized by an only partly ironic Ben Stein, a Los Angeles lawyer and economist whose E-mail to a New York Times columnist was quoted on that paper's op-ed page last Wednesday: "When O.J. gets off," he wrote, "the whites will riot the way we whites do: leave the cities, go to Idaho or Oregon or Arizona, vote for Gingrich... and punish the blacks by closing their day-care programs and cutting off their Medicaid." This grim vision was precisely what politicians feared to articulate. If they benefited from the verdict, they wanted to do so passively.

But author and political analyst Kevin Phillips suggested that candidates need not be so coy, that discussing white anger over the verdict is perfectly legitimate: "The question is whether raising issues like affirmative action or immigration is something that is automatically defined as appealing to the worst in people. If you think people are justified in thinking affirmative action has turned into quotas and that immigration has been mishandled, then people are entitled to be angry about it."

Some Democratic strategists see the opportunity for a more positive message. They suggest that the verdict will confirm a yearning among voters for a healer, a candidate who can bridge that divide-someone, say, like that fellow from Hope. But Bill Clinton is apparently not the top choice for the job. A TIME/CNN poll conducted last week shows that Americans see Powell as the most likely unifier, a figure who transcends race, not a politician who exploits it.

Half of whites and 52% of blacks say Powell understands the needs and problems of people like them. Blacks are far more pessimistic than whites about race in America: only 31% of blacks think race relations will ever improve, whereas 54% of whites think so. Yet a notable 41% of whites and 32% of blacks think Powell would help race relations in America if he were elected President.

Powell played both sides of the verdict. While he said tersely, "We've got to move on," he also noted that "the different reactions to the trial from blacks and whites is something we should not walk away and forget about." Powell may not be able to, even if the issue never explicitly resurfaces. "The verdict is bound to prove psychologically troublesome to Colin Powell," says Phillips, "because it introduces in middle-class and upper-middle-class white minds a question of a type of affirmative action and preference they hadn't thought about before. It's going to be very difficult for Powell to discuss this in a way that doesn't offend blacks or whites."

There is one point of solidarity where blacks and whites come together under the verdict: a mutual distrust of the American justice system. In an odd way, the trial's outcome has coupled the militant white right and disfranchised blacks in the belief that the same hand that planted the glove at Rockingham pulled the trigger at Ruby Ridge. While the Simpson trial wound down, Congress found itself incapable of producing the once surefire counterterrorism bill. It had been derailed by a coalition of conservative Republicans and civil libertarian Democrats concerned about giving broad new powers to law-enforcement officials.

But a common enemy does not a true friendship make; black and white Americans have some analogous frustrations, but for antagonistic reasons. It's a divide that even a man respected by both sides will have a hard time bridging.

--Reported by Jordan Bonfante and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Sylvester Monroe/Los Angeles