Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Clinton to offset isolation, talking to 'average guy' Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 17:26:45 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION \HD Clinton to offset isolation, talking to 'average guy' \BY Ronald A. Taylor \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT LITTLE ROCK, Ark. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Tomorrow, while the shape of his administration is still being forged, President-elect Bill Clinton flies off to Georgia to show off in his best-known role: master campaigner. Three weeks after the end of his successful presidential campaign, Mr. Clinton is eager to get back out on the stump once again, this time to help Sen. Wyche Fowler in a runoff election. "I'm really looking forward to it," he told reporters yesterday. "I may be a little bit out of practice, but I'm going to do my best for Senator Fowler." In Mr. Clinton's one-day, two-stop return to the campaign trail in Georgia, following his triumphant street walk along Georgia Avenue in Washington last week, analysts see a preview of Mr. Clinton's presidential style. While the man who is to govern approaches the takeover of power at a deliberate, by-the-numbers pace, the man who would be loved and revered is still hurling himself into crowds as though the campaign isn't over yet. "He knows he only won 43 percent of the popular vote and that he comes in during the most difficult entering period of any president in a long time," said Harold Barger, a University of Texas political science professor. Mr. Barger, who examined in "The Impossible Presidency" how Ronald Reagan used imagery and communication skills to fashion a successful presidency, sees elements of Mr. Reagan's success in Mr. Clinton's early public appearances as president-elect. "He is conscious of the need to build a consensus," he said. Like Mr. Reagan, he said, Mr. Clinton "knows how to manipulate the symbols and imagery just right." A good example of that could be seen during his Washington visit last week, when he veered away from the Capitol Hill-White House axis on Pennsylvania Avenue to visit Georgia Avenue near the gritty Kennedy Street corridor, mingled with morning commuters on a Metrobus and showed up at dawn at a McDonald's restaurant. Such events are central to Mr. Clinton's style. The Arkansas governor's presence as a morning jogger is taken for granted around here. In the morning fog yesterday, for instance, several of the Little Rock residents he encountered in the neighborhood around the governor's mansion barely looked up as the Clinton entourage of Secret Service agents and reporters jogged by. Mr. Clinton says his style is a way of overcoming the insulation of a chief executive and taking the public pulse in a way that is unscientific but intuitively comfortable for him. "Getting out and meeting real people plays an important role in Governor Clinton's style," said Dee Dee Myers, a spokeswoman for the president-elect. "If you shake enough hands, you hear everything. It's important to him in a governing sense, and it's important to him in a political sense." It is also a politically effective way to build a cushion against an inevitable decline in popularity, said Susan Roberts, a presidential scholar at Furman University. "The best evidence that you are not out of touch is to appear accessible and to try to be an average guy," she said. Pressing the flesh with average voters also shows "he recognizes that the anti-incumbency fervor is not directed just at Congress," she said. To make his ambitious program work, Mr. Clinton needs broad and deep public support, Miss Roberts added. American voters have grown wary of politicians who cite the situations of individuals to buttress policies, she said. Unless a leader is perceived to be truly in touch with voters, anecdotes will not be believed, she said. Because Mr. Clinton is seen talking with homeless people in a fast-food outlet, Miss Roberts said, "we can imagine that when he shares anecdotes with us he really does understand." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM