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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992                   TAG: 9203230172
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON-TSONGAS VS. BUSH-QUAYLE?

The opportunity does not lie in the fact that Clinton will have one less rival beating on him and "the character issue" for the rest of the primary season. Jerry Brown's still around to do that. Besides, Clinton can figure on considerably harder pounding this fall from the Republicans.

The opportunity lies, rather, in the room Tsongas now has given Clinton to forge a coherent and comprehensive message to take to the country.

Room to appropriate, rather than find small points of distinction from, the theme of economic discipline that Tsongas expounded.

Room to combine his own emphasis on making human investments in the health and skills of the American people with Tsongas' emphasis on making the investments of capital on which the nation's future likewise depends.

Room to offer, in short, the sort of comprehensive vision for which America thirsts but which is so manifestly lacking in the Bush administration.

Lacking in Bush and, so far, lacking in the Democrats.

Congress is no place to look. Aside from all Congress' other problems, no legislative body of 535 individual politicians can offer such a vision or exercise such leadership in sustained fashion. Only a president can.

Tsongas tried heroically, and went farther than anyone would have imagined scarcely a month ago. You don't win Democratic presidential nominations, however, with straight-talking economic prescriptions - and, to echo Clinton's criticism, there was a coldblooded air to Tsongas' preoccupation with only the cash-money side of the equation.

But better than Clinton, if not always perfectly, Tsongas did not equivocate on his principles. In the Clinton campaign, there are hints of the pandering process by which Democratic nominations are won - but which also devalue the Democratic contribution to the quadrennial presidential debate and diminish a Democratic nominee's appeal to November's broader electorate.

In retiree-rich Florida, Clinton demagogued on Social Security; to curry favor with Jewish voters, he distorted Tsongas' position on Israel. He elevated a middle-class cut (coupled with higher taxes on upper-income Americans) to a central place in his campaign; at best, that's a diversion from themes of save-and-invest and economic renewal that should be fundamental.

In conceding the nomination sooner rather than later, however, Tsongas has opened for Clinton an escape path from the old Democratic dilemma. Barring developments far removed from a refusal to appease every special interest in the party, Clinton has won the nomination. No longer is there any nominating imperative for Clinton to be a "Slick Willie" with a thousand faces - or, to echo Tsongas, pretend to be Santa Claus.

Clinton has strengths. He has demonstrated a welcome ability to unite, if in fragile fashion, blacks and working-class whites who in recent years have too often stood apart. His good ol' boy manner (itself a strength, to a point) masks a mastery of many issues, and a creditable gubernatorial record in such areas as education.

But Clinton must talk straight. He may not need Paul Tsongas as his running mate. But he needs the spirit of the Tsongas campaign on the ticket.

Keywords:
POLITICS