ROANOKE TIMES 

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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 12, 1991                   TAG: 9104120065
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

TSONGAS VOWS TO ROUSE NATION AS CANDIDATE

Proclaiming himself "an economic Paul Revere," former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas on Thursday dedicated his forthcoming Democratic presidential candidacy to rousing America from the deficit doldrums by forging an alliance between business and government.

Leading the country back to "economic pre-eminence" in the world, Tsongas said in a speech at the National Press Club, will require the Democratic Party to expand its objectives beyond its traditional social-welfare concerns.

"We must become the party of economic rebirth, of economic nationalism, of economic patriotism, of economic pre-eminence," he said.

"This requires change," Tsongas said. "It means reaching out to the business community of America. It means partnership."

Tsongas will not officially announce his candidacy until April 30 in his hometown of Lowell, Mass., when he will become this quadrennial's first declared presidential candidate. But Thursday's speech, in which he sketched his domestic policy agenda, effectively marks the belated start of the campaign for the 1992 Democratic nomination.

The competition has been delayed by a combination of factors, particularly the Middle East crisis and the reluctance of prospective Democratic contenders to challenge President Bush when polls show him to be enjoying overwhelming approval ratings.

But Tsongas said he decided that the current political vacuum offers an opportunity to help him overcome his relative obscurity. "If there were 13 other candidates, I'd get lost in the shuffle," he said.

His battle against cancer motivated him to run.

"If you face your own mortality, as I have, you think differently," he said. "Your values are different, and you have a much greater sense of your responsibilities to your children and to those who came before you. If I had the same mind-set as I had before, I would not run in '92, I would run in '96."

Among the ideas he espouses are a targeted capital-gains tax cut, tax credits to spur research and development and relaxed antitrust laws to allow U.S. companies to "muscle up" to compete better in world markets.

"No other Democrat knows how to work with business and has the economic background that I have," Tsongas said. "I grew up in a Republican businessman's household, so I'm not anti-business by instinct."

Democratic chances of success in 1992, Tsongas said, will depend on the economy. "If the public perception is that the country is doing fine, no Democrat is going to win or even come close," he said.

Keywords:
POLITICS 


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