NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Brings Back Power-Driven Style : Politics: Unlike some recent Democrats, Arkansas governor shows ferocious determination in his quest.

By RONALD BROWNSTEIN

March 19, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

Regularly over the past two decades, the Democrats have nominated presidential candidates--George S. McGovern and Michael S. Dukakis come to mind--who seem like the kind of guys who might quietly slip out of the bar when chairs start flying.

If anyone doubted that the Democrats are looking at something very different this year in Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, last Sunday night’s televised debate in Chicago should have settled the question. When former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. raised allegations that Clinton had funneled state business to his wife’s law firm, the Arkansas governor turned on him so fiercely that Brown said the next day he thought that Clinton might take a swing at him.

That flash of anger captured the ferocious determination Clinton has displayed in battling back from repeated allegations of personal misconduct to take control of the Democratic contest. With his sweeping victories in Tuesday’s Michigan and Illinois primaries, Clinton now stands as a commanding favorite over Brown and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas in the race for the Democratic nomination.

On a personal level, Clinton’s style is almost always textbook Southern gracious. But, as a candidate, he has emerged from the crucible of the past eight weeks with a bruising take-no-prisoners attitude that might make McGovern or Dukakis blush.

In his return to the forefront of the presidential race, many analysts say, Clinton has displayed a hunger for the White House--an elemental drive for power--unmatched by any Democratic politician in perhaps a generation. Many wondered if Dukakis or former Vice President Walter F. Mondale wanted to be President badly enough to bleed for it; after the past two months of turmoil, many are asking what Clinton wouldn’t endure to be President.

“This is a man who passionately wants the White House,” says Robert Dallek, professor of history at UCLA and author of an acclaimed biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. “My sense of Clinton is that he has demonstrated a kind of strength and durability that reminds me of people like Johnson and Richard Nixon, and even Franklin Roosevelt. These are people who go through the wringer and then pop back up ready to do battle again.”

Even in the most grim moments of the past two months, Clinton’s sense of personal mission has been irreducible. On the night before the New Hampshire primary--when he faced the eclipse of a dream he has nurtured for decades--Clinton careened from bowling alleys to diners to nightclubs as if compelled to do everything he could imagine to prevent disaster--and then do some more.

But in an era of widespread suspicion of politicians, such single-mindedness raises questions of its own. Clinton’s very determination to fight through the individual allegations against his character frame what may increasingly become a central character question in his campaign: Exactly why does he want the White House so badly?

“He’s ambitious; sure, he is. Every American kid wants to be President,” says Richard Goodwin, a speech writer and adviser to Johnson and John F. Kennedy. “The question is, why does he want it? What does he want to do with it?”

Through the first half of the primary season, Clinton has revealed glimmers of the answers to those questions. He has displayed a core conviction that a career in politics--despite all the cynicism about public officials--is a noble profession, the best way to improve a society that needs mending.

And yet Clinton has also shown a willingness to maneuver on issues--challenging Tsongas over supporting reductions in Social Security cost-of-living increases, for example, after previously supporting such reductions himself--that causes even some supporters to uneasily question whether any commitment in Clinton is as deep as the desire to win.

“There are blind spots, weaknesses he’s shown in the campaign, as well as the strengths,” one sympathetic observer said.

In his rise, fall and resurrection on the national stage, Clinton has revealed himself to be a complex man who seems to crave approval and relish combat in equal measure. But, above all, Clinton has shown himself to be a politician --more the heir to Johnson than to former President Jimmy Carter or Dukakis, both of whom saw the nuts-and-bolts of politics as a distraction from the real business of consuming position papers.

“Listening to Clinton talk, especially off the cuff, I hear a lot of parallels to Carter,” said author James Fallows, one of Carter’s White House speech writers. “But his personality could not be more different: Carter was someone who did not like the mechanical end of politics, and Clinton does. And I think that weighs in Clinton’s favor.”

Few professionals in either party disagree. By consensus, Clinton has consistently outmaneuvered his opponents, displaying not only a tenacity, but also an agility and an instinct for the jugular uncommon among Democrats. If not a man among boys in the Democratic race, Clinton at times certainly has appeared to be a professional among amateurs.

In New Hampshire, Clinton largely adopted a penitent demeanor, painfully aware that his standing with voters was fragile after the emergence of charges that he sought to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War and allegations of marital infidelity.

Campaigning in high school gyms and coffee shops, he seemed almost plaintive as he asked voters to look past the allegations that had sent him tumbling in the polls. In his hotel lounge after the long days of seeking votes, Clinton sometimes appeared not only physically, but also emotionally, exhausted; he would slink down into a couch, too tired to move, too anxious to sleep.

But once he survived his trial by fire in New Hampshire, Clinton came out breathing fire himself. His campaign turned on Tsongas, his chief rival, with a devastating series of attacks from which the former senator clearly has not yet recovered.

Florida is a textbook case. In the 1988 Democratic primary, Dukakis carried the state in part because he won overwhelming majorities among Jewish retirees in the condominium canyons of North Miami Beach. After running well among Jewish voters in Maryland, Tsongas appeared poised to possibly replicate the feat.

But Clinton’s campaign blanketed the condominiums with leaflets questioning Tsongas’ support for Israel and Social Security. Tsongas objected that the information left an inaccurate impression--and even Clinton later disowned the materials distributed about Tsongas’ views on Israel, blaming them on local supporters.

But the damage was done: Clinton ran evenly with Tsongas among Jews in Florida and ran up a 24-point margin among senior citizens en route to his decisive victory, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll.

That kind of hardball has raised eyebrows among GOP strategists who are more accustomed to Democrats willing to lose decorously. Although many Democratic strategists still see Clinton as a flawed general election candidate vulnerable to attacks from the GOP on his character and record if he wins the nomination, a contrary view is taking root among some Republicans.

These GOP strategists increasingly see Clinton as an adversary in their own bare-knuckled image: a politician who can soldier through almost any kind of adversity--and give back as good as he gets. “This guy is proving himself to be major, heavyweight material,” GOP pollster Bill McInturff says. “Every week they are doing some very aggressive and tactical thing that anticipates an opponent’s strength and then rips their guts out.”

All this high-wire maneuvering at the borderline of determination and duplicity carries a cost. In the same way that Nixon and Johnson made many Americans uncomfortable with their naked ambition, Clinton too strikes some voters as the epitome of a politician whose first principle is his own advancement.

For example, that uneasiness--reinforced by doubts about Clinton’s veracity in responding to the allegations of misconduct--regularly surfaced in conversations last week with voters in Macomb County, Mich. Several of these voters--the kind of blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” unlikely to vote in a Democratic primary but crucial to a general election--described Clinton as a politician in tones that left no doubt that they did not view the label as a badge of honor.

“He’s a career politician,” said Bill Wagner, a disabled veteran and part-time student. “He’s very packaged; he’s very slick.”

And yet on the same day Wagner reached that dismissive conclusion, Clinton delivered a stirring appeal for racial unity in virtually all-white Macomb County--a community whose political identity is defined by its hostility toward the political demands of virtually all-black Detroit. The next day, Clinton went into a black church in Detroit--where racial resentments are just as raw--and called for reconciliation with the white suburbs.

Such performances steel the conviction of Clinton’s admirers that he craves not only the rewards of power, but also its license to change society. “The early Lyndon Johnson--in his pre-tragic, pre-Vietnam stage--wanted power, but he wanted power to do something with it,” Fallows says. “In that sense, Clinton seems to me like the early L.B.J.”

In the coming months, even as he confronts all the other questions of character looming before him, nothing may be as important for Clinton as convincing voters like Wagner that his motives are truly so broad.

Primary Results

Democrats

Clinton Tsongas Brown Illinois 51% 26% 15% 99% of vote counted Michigan 51% 17% 26% 100% of vote counted GOP Bush Buchanan Duke Illinois 76% 22% --% 99% of vote counted Michigan 67% 25% 3%

100% of vote counted