After The Riots, Politics As Usual

AFTER MONTHS OF PENNY-ANTE POSTURING, THE stakes in the presidential campaign moved sharply higher as Bush and Clinton blew some rhetorical smoke over the volatile issues of race, class and domestic neglect. So stark a reminder of the challenges facing the nation might have helped focus an erstwhile inchoate campaign. But neither candidate seized the opportunity to demonstrate much leadership; instead they bickered about the Great Society and settled for scoring some political points.

Both men trounced their pesky primary opponents in North Carolina, Indiana and the District of Columbia to move one step closer to this fall's matchup. Arkansas Governor Clinton has 80% of the delegates he needs for the Democratic nomination, while Bush's coronation is already assured.

For his part, Ross Perot, still the wild card among the Big Three, tried to scramble out of the political spotlight with a self-imposed hiatus in his un- campaign. The Texas billionaire, citing "saturation bombing" of his offices by the press, beat a strategic retreat to search for answers to the questions he should dread: his specific stands on the budget deficit, health care, urban policy, international aid and every other complex problem that elicits reams of position papers from presidential hopefuls. This clever move comes at the right time, just when the press is beginning to dig its unforgiving claws into him. Last week the Associated Press reported that according to papers from Richard Nixon's White House, Perot offered $50 million in 1969 to burnish the President's image. Perot denies the allegation, saying, "I can't control what people scribble on pads."

Nor can he control how the public feels about him, which is, in a word, great. A poll in the crucial state of California shows Perot in first place, followed by Bush and then the Arkansas Governor. A national poll by the Times Mirror reveals a close three-way race with the President, who, apparently stung by his initial fumbling reaction to the riots, garnered 33%, barely edging out his two challengers, who captured 30% each.

Such polls, however, measure only popularity, not leadership, which so far remains in depressingly short supply.