Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 26, 1994                   TAG: 9401260189
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOHN KING ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FINALLY, HIS OWN SCRIPT

Looking back in his State of the Union ad dress, he could rightly brag of an economy on the rebound and an end to the days of certain gridlock. But while he unquestionably has put an activist stamp on Washington, there isn't as yet a Clinton legacy, for the nation or his party.

That is where 1994 comes in, if Clinton can persuade Congress to keep close to the script he outlined Tuesday night.

In a hectic first year, Clinton signed family-leave and motor-voter laws, reversed some Republican abortion policies and made a first dent in the deficit.

But so much of it seemed inevitable: Jittery markets left no choice but trimming the debt, and most of the legislation had been bottled up in years of Republican vetoes and partisan gridlock. Clinton, it seemed, frequently was working off a script that would have been awaiting any Democratic president.

Not any more.

Health care and welfare reform, centerpiece issues of his campaign, anchor his agenda for a year sure to be complicated by the sheer size and cost of proposed solutions as elections approach.

"These are the issues he most wants to bear his personal stamp, and they are issues that matter most to people out in the country," said Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos.

While crime didn't have much to do with Clinton's election, it is now of paramount concern - in part because worries about the economy are receding, but also because senseless violence is no longer isolated in America's inner cities but a disease of middle-class America as well.

So as he wove crime into his agenda Tuesday night, Clinton's challenge went beyond joining the chorus for more prison cells and tougher sentences.

With newfound political capital, Clinton added to his script an appeal perhaps only a president can make, asking the nation to go beyond thinking about what to do about crime and explore the hows and whys.

In doing so, Clinton was also trying to recast his Democratic Party as one dedicated to government yet well aware of its limits, its inability to legislate community values and personal responsibility.

"More than anything else, he has to assert himself as the moral leader of the country," said Al From, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and a Clinton adviser. "The end of 1993 brought new stature to his presidency. Now he has to make health care and welfare and crime a national cause. If he does, he will take over what has been the Republican issue base in presidential campaigns for most of the past 25 years."

Yet with that ambitious agenda came reminders that Clinton tries too much at once. Republicans already have settled on an election-year theme that will complicate his task. They say Clinton's speeches would make most conservatives proud but he then makes a liberal retreat and favors the heavy, costly hand of government.

"When push comes shove," asked Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, "Is he going to be for a tough crime bill or for tough rhetoric?"

Clinton's fellow Democrats will have more say than Republicans about whether he passes Dole's test.

As the majority in Congress, it is up to Democrats to push Clinton's crowded agenda: Like it or not, their fate is tied to the success of their president.

"And his relationship with the public demands that there be progress," said Democratic consultant Ann Lewis. "It is not personal or ideological. The relationship is performance based and because of that it has to be regularly renewed."

That is a recurring theme in Clinton's script, found in every draft of his speech and in the administration's message to Democratic congressional leaders during a retreat this week: Resist pressures to wait on welfare reform or to take only incremental steps on crime and health care.

"Washington may think it can do only one thing at a time but real people are juggling things every day and don't have much patience for that argument," said James Carville, a Clinton political adviser. "The challenge of the State of the Union, and the overriding theme of this president, is to put an umbrella over everything to show how it is all connected. It's not an easy thing to do, but his success depends on it."