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: No surprises, Clinton tells world Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 17:01:12 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD No surprises, Clinton tells world \SH Pledges policy 'continuity' \BY Ronald A. Taylor \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT LITTLE ROCK, Ark. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - President-elect Bill Clinton assured world leaders yesterday that a change of leadership is no signal of an abrupt change in U.S. foreign policy as he strained to sustain his boy-next-door image in his hometown. "Today I want to affirm the essential continuity in American foreign policy," he said in a statement on the lawn of the Arkansas Governor's Mansion here, with Vice President-elect Al Gore at his side. Mr. Clinton also said the "hard and vital task" of rejuvenating the recessionary U.S. economy would be his top domestic priority. "The task has already begun," he said the day after his electoral landslide. "It will not be easy, but we will spare no effort to restore jobs, growth and income to the American people," said Mr. Clinton, who also promised those in financial markets that he would "pursue stability even as we pursue new growth." In the next few days, the presi-dent-elect will "meet, talk, get his voice back, think, return phone calls," said communications director George Stephanopoulos. No decision had been announced on a possible "victory tour." "I am happy, exhausted, thinking of all the work to be done," Mr. Clinton told reporters later. Aides expected the governor to conduct most of the transition from Little Rock rather than Washington. The architects of the Democratic victory analyzed the results, disclosed some of the winning elements and proclaimed the election verdict a signal of a mandate to lead and a preview of a sea change in voting patterns. Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg characterized the election results as a sign of the disintegration of the voter coalition assembled first by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign. Chief campaign strategist James Carville, however, undercut any claims to political genius. "We didn't find the key to the electoral lock here, we just picked it," he said. Meanwhile, Mr. Clinton quickly donned the presidential mantle, and attitude, yesterday - from his no-questions, please-morning-after statement to a thickening blanket of security between himself and the media. Mr. Clinton, who could be counted on during the campaign for chats with reporters, became less accessible than ever yesterday. Reporters were allowed no closer than across the street from the Governor's Mansion yesterday. Only a representative handful of the estimated 2,500 media representatives were allowed to attend the morning-after statement about continuity in foreign affairs. "America calls on me to be its next president," he said, but he added that until Jan. 20, 1993, George Bush is still in charge. "It is he who speaks for America," said Mr. Clinton, 46. "During the transition that is about to begin, I urge America's friends and foes alike to recognize, as I do, that America has only one president at a time," he said in a statement released yesterday. "America foreign policy remains solely in his hands, that even as American administrations change, America's fundamental interests do not," he said. Typical of an incoming president, Mr. Clinton warned U.S. enemies against mistaking a government in transition for a vulnerable one. "The greatest mistake any adversary could make would be to doubt American resolve during this period of transition," he said, just hours after Iraq President Saddam Hussein celebrated the Mr. Bush's defeat by firing gunshots into the air. Mr. Clinton restated a theme from his campaign: "The Cold War is won. Now we have the opportunity to build a new peace." He hinted at his interest in working with Mr. Bush on some of the pressing matters on the foreign policy agenda. He listed the "continued progress in the Mideast peace talks," "completing negotiation on the details of the START II arms control agreement" and bolstering "Russia's fledgling democracy" as areas in which "I look forward to working closely with President Bush." Since winning enough delegates to secure the Democratic Party's presidental nomination, Mr. Clinton has received periodic national security briefings from the CIA and the National Security Council. Yesterday, Clinton adviser Betsey Wright said she "could not remember" the date of his last national security briefing. According to a Clinton spokesman here, the president-elect's last national security briefing occurred in mid-September when CIA Director Robert Gates visited the candidate in Little Rock. The details of transition are in flux. No decision has been announced on when Mr. Clinton will step down from the governor's office, a question made more thorny by the fact that the Clintons have no residence here, or anywhere else, other than the Governor's Mansion. Yesterday, just before Mr. Clinton met at the mansion with transition-team directors, the top-level campaign staffers talked to reporters about how they steered the campaign to success. Mr. Carville got in a last dig at the Bush campaign, saying Mr. Clinton was aided by GOP mistakes. "The [Republican] convention was idiotic," he said of the attacks on Mr. Clinton at the GOP's August convention in Houston. From that point on, the Bush campaign "was playing catch-up," he said, even though the campaign eventually was put in the hands of James A. Baker III, labeled by Mr. Carville as "the gold standard for running a campaign in this era." Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm talked about how the campaign focused its money on 22 "play-hard states" and lost only one of them, North Carolina. Mr. Greenberg said that their polls showed that the gap between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush never closed to less than 7 percent and that the outcome signaled "the collapse of the Republican coalition." But campaign post-mortems here were overshadowed by the talk of transition from the Arkansas capital to the nation's capital. One of Mr. Clinton's first acts yesterday as a neighbor who happens to be president-elect showed that the boy next door is moving on. Instead of a morning jog, Mr. Clinton tried to walk to the home of Carolyn Staley, a high school classmate who lived next door to him in Hot Springs, Ark. The four-block stroll to the 1880s-era frame house of Jerry and Carolyn Staley is one he has taken countless times. But yesterday, when he and Hillary Clinton tried to walk, they were surrounded by cameras and microphones. "Come on, let's get outta here," Mr. Clinton said to his wife and rode in a dozen-vehicle motorcade to a 10:30 a.m. brunch at the Staleys that had been organized late on election night by his old friends from Hot Springs and Georgetown University. After looking out the front door and seeing a media horde penned across the street from her house, Mrs. Staley said, "That's one signal that things are forever going to be very different here." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. 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