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

DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992                   TAG: 9203080130
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID VON DREHLE THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: CAMDEN, S.C.                                LENGTH: Long

IS BILL CLINTON GOOD OL' BOY OR SCHOLAR? BOTH

You never know, with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, which side you'll see next. One minute, you're watching Good Ol' Billy, the affable, self-described "redneck" who calls a barbecue "a feedin'." Good Ol' Billy says either George Bush increased the deficit "or my math is bad wrong." He can't make up his mind whether Bush's trade mission to Japan "like to have killed me," or "made me so mad I could spit."

Then, as suddenly as Clark Kent changes to Superman, Good Ol' Billy is transformed into Policy Wonk, who stores mountains of information in a single scan and talks - a great deal - apparently without breathing. Policy Wonk made an appearance in Jacksonville, Fla., recently. An unsuspecting citizen asked a question about education. Policy Wonk let fly with a withering barrage of data.

When a pause came at last, the relieved audience looked around hopefully, then sagged. Policy Wonk was merely reloading. "And let me just say two more things. As the U.S. census of 1990 graphically indicates . . . ."

Policy Wonk was a Rhodes scholar. Good Ol' Billy is from Hope, Ark. Both sides are genuine, but the contrast can be jarring, especially when along the spectrum between them, Clinton seems to have more facets than a debutante's engagement ring - a little bit Tiffany diamond, especially when it comes to resilience; and a little bit Woolworth rhinestone, as when his charm oozes toward the unctuous.

In the Thursday night debate among leading Democratic presidential candidates, Policy Wonk got so wrapped up in dissecting an opponent's tax plan that former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas, no slouch as a wonk himself, finally jumped in to say, "I think we've lost about half the audience."

Good Ol' Billy, in the debate, squinted from under his tousled hair and said "Jerry, chill out," to former California Gov. Jerry Brown.

When he is at his best, Clinton comes together in a powerful package: a master of detail with a down-home feeling. High-tech, high-touch. When he isn't clicking, he can strike people as two-faced, soulless, trying to be all things to all people.

As he tries to put distance between himself and the controversies that have followed his campaign, Clinton's shift from defense to offense centers on defining what he calls his "people-based economics," a plan, he says, to lift the rich, the poor and everyone in between. There is a lot of wonkish material in here: "targeted tax credits," "community policing," all manner of education and social service reform. Getting such details into a form folks can cotton to is a work in progress, judging from Clinton's recent appearances. He keeps seeking, with mixed success, the right mix of data and sound bites.

When Policy Wonk is in control, Clinton tends to bury his theme in parsing, qualification and minutiae. Now and then, there is an unobstructed glimpse of The Wonk's brain, and it is an awesome thing to behold: information spooling ceaselessly on spindles greased with poise and confidence, a perpetual motion machine fueled by the heat from Clinton's vocal chords.

Such a moment was the Jacksonville speech. Factoid fell over factoid, statistic piled on statistic, until the sheer weight simply crushed Clinton's numbingly abstract thesis, which said that Republicans endorse "opportunity without responsibility" while wrong-headed Democrats defend "responsibility without opportunity."

And when the first abstraction collapsed, there was another, then another. Minds reeled and eyes glazed. Was "growth and fairness" the same as "opportunity and responsibility"? If so, why two sets of words? If not, how were they different? What about "accountability"? Was that the same as "fairness"? As "responsibility"?

"He was tired and he was sick," consultant Paul Begala explained later. "Every candidate has speeches where they just roll the tape."

Good Ol' Billy has his own problems. In Camden, he spoke from the the porch of a white-pillared house draped with bunting at the edge of a picturesque town green.

"I . . . DON'T . . . KNOW . . . HOW . . . to do anything in public office but fight for people like you!" Good Ol' Billy cried; President Bush, meanwhile, shifts blame "like he just come in from a planet someplace else."

But if Policy Wonk's speech was too much substance without sound bite, Good Ol' Billy's populist rhetoric probably erred the other way. "We gotta have an economics for Camden, S.C., that goes way beyond Wall Street. I'm not against Wall Street, but I'm for you!" he drawled. In neither case did the new "people-based economics" theme draw much reaction. The biggest applause was reserved for older concepts - like trading college education for national service and "restoring the dignity of blue-collar work" - that Clinton had time to polish to speech-studding jewels in the days before the storms hit his campaign.

Trying to make a campaign jewel out of his economic plans has presented problems. Help arrived Thursday, in the form of a newspaper analysis of census data. (Policy Wonk loves analysis of data.) In the dramatic, quotable conclusion, the study declared that 77 percent of the last economic boom enriched the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Within the hour, it was in Clinton's speech: a statistic to drawl over.

Keywords:
POLITICS