Bill's Big Bash

By MARGARET CARLSON

Bill Clinton came into Madison Square Garden with a second chance to explain who he is and what he cares about. He did it by grabbing control of the convention in a way only Republicans have known how to do until now: with an unapologetic appeal to sentiment and a relentless approach to organizing. For the first time, party chairman Ron Brown and the candidate were in total synch. Together they took charge of who would be on the podium and for how long; what would be said to the press (blue cue cards were given to delegates for that purpose); and what would be seen on many local stations, which were provided with taped video clips created in the Democrats' own satellite TV studio.

All the energy Democrats usually expend fighting with one another went into a big-budget Hollywood production, complete with filmed biographies by Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the creators of TV's Designing Women and Evening Shade. One of the highlights was a 1963 film clip showing John Kennedy shaking hands in the Rose Garden with the 16-year-old Clinton, a priceless piece of celluloid that Clinton aide Frank Greer dug out of the Kennedy Library.

The convention was a hundred Fourth of July parades rolled into one, a pageant of family values and up-by-the-bootstraps success stories and patriotism, with silver confetti falling from the sky like diamonds and 60,000 balloons blown up by volunteers. Delegates heard The Star-Spangled Banner sung so often by stars like Aretha Franklin and Marilyn Horne that they may actually know all the words by now. The whole thing was as Republican as a capital-gains-tax cut, threatening to become at times as maudlin as Nixon's Checkers speech and as corny as Reagan's Morning in America campaign.

Clinton dispensed with losers' night, a Democratic tradition whereby those vanquished in the primaries get to take one last prime-time swipe at the winner. Jesse Jackson's ranting took place off-camera at a Don't Mess with Jesse rally at Harlem's Apollo Theater. By the time he took to the convention stage on Tuesday, half-glasses perched professorially on his nose, the anger seemed to have gone out of him. He still had the lyrics, but the music was missing. The Democrats' other problem child, former California Governor Jerry Brown, got only 20 minutes to put his name into nomination and have his antiestablishment say.

New York Governor Mario Cuomo has also had his past differences with Clinton, causing some to worry that his nominating speech might lack his customary fervor. But the Delphic orator brought all his skills from Albany to Manhattan. His voice full of fury one minute and forgiveness the next, he called out Clinton's name no fewer than 30 times. He evoked the image of a national parade celebrating a victory over problems at home more joyous than the one that followed the gulf war. "So step aside, Mr. Bush!" Cuomo shouted. "You've had your parade."

There was much grumbling -- especially among the 15,000 journalists covering the event -- that this display of harmony was a boring contrast to the intrafamily feuds of conventions past. But for all its made-for-TV slickness and We Are the World-type finale, the effort to show that Democrats believe in the American Dream had its moments of authenticity: Senator Al Gore's father scooping up his blond-haired grandson Albert III, 9, whose horrible brush with death was evoked in the Tennessean's eloquent and moving acceptance speech; 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton breaking into a smile of relief after she reclaimed her mother's hand on the jammed podium; Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore dancing like two teenagers to Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop.

The convention showed that the activist tie-dyed Democrats who wrested control of the party in 1968 are grown up now with children and mortgages. Middle America, with its ritual and sentiment and well-tended lawns, is less to be derided on Saturday Night Live than emulated. Four years ago, Clinton could not have been sure that when he recited part of the Pledge of Allegiance in his speech the audience would spontaneously join in and finish the final phrase with him.

The scene on the podium after the two acceptance speeches was like a wedding | reception where the bride and groom fan out to dance with the rest of the family. It was a Norman Rockwell tableau that could persuade older voters that the first all-baby-boomer ticket won't ignore them, signaling that while they may be the younger generation, they are still the type to bring the grandchildren home for the holidays.

Bush's campaign staff back in Washington, wowed by the display, was hit with the realization that Clinton and Gore are prepared to fight for every bit of schmaltzy turf this time around. They learned that Clinton was ready to take aim at the President in what promises to be a brutal fall campaign. One of the most powerful passages in Clinton's acceptance speech was this challenge: "And so I say, George Bush, if you won't use your power to help America, step aside. I will."

No amount of planning could have predicted the unexpected bouquet Ross Perot would throw conventioneers when he cited a revitalized Democratic Party as one reason he was dropping his campaign. Just before 11 a.m. on Thursday, strategist James Carville bounded into Clinton's 14th-floor suite at the Hotel Inter-Continental to announce that Perot was about to hold a news conference. Still dressed in his running shorts and tinkering with his acceptance speech, Clinton jumped up and turned on the television. "He was a little overwhelmed," reported an aide.

Clinton continued revising his speech, adding a few lines inviting Perot's followers into the Democratic fold. Late in the afternoon, when some aides complained that the speech was too long, the candidate defended it by claiming that it had fewer words than Michael Dukakis' 1988 oration. Actually, the Massachusetts Governor's text was shorter, and his lightning-fast diction made his delivery time shorter still. In his own laid-back drawl, Clinton took about 55 minutes to deliver his address. Recalling the fiasco of Clinton's interminable 1988 speech, his verbosity last week seemed on the verge of losing his audience, but a powerful delivery and some surefire applause lines saved the day.

On a practical level, the lack of internal squabbling means the Democrats are already organizing for the fall, sending new staffers for a four-day training session in New Jersey. Overcoming the rivalries of previous election years, many state party and Clinton campaign staffs will work as one. At a fund-raising party in the wee hours of Friday morning, the first ever to capitalize on post-convention euphoria, Clinton and Gore collected at least $3.4 million.

The Year of the Woman may be the most overworked cliche of the 1992 political season. But at this convention, as Clinton put it, the women made up "a league of their own." Mostly on the outside when the men in charge were creating the S&L mess, running up the deficit and awarding themselves a midnight pay raise, women candidates -- including the Democrats' Senate aspirants -- are now reaping the benefit of a widespread yearning for new faces and wholesale change. Women's rights -- particularly the right to choose an abortion -- were one of the convention's most prominent themes. Apart from his formal acceptance speech, Clinton decided to give his only public address to the National Women's Political Caucus, where some of the nation's women office seekers were assembled onstage. Clinton is fond of pointing out that he is the son of a strong mother, the husband of a strong wife and the father of a daughter who wants to grow up to build space stations. He received a foot- stomping cheer when he said, "I don't believe it runs a man down to build a woman up."

Most of all, the convention was about giving a fuller picture of Clinton's character after the beating it took in the primary season and the pummeling Republicans are sure to give it in the fall. If the Bush forces doubt that Democrats are prepared to engage them on the values front, they should play a video of the Clintons' triumphant two-block march from the basement of Macy's to the convention hall after the Ohio delegation put the nominee over the top at 10:54 p.m. Entering the Garden to a shower of confetti and 30 minutes of boisterous cheering, the couple and their young daughter looked as happy and wholesome as a family can be.

Before the convention, Clinton said he wanted people to know that there is a central core in him that they can relate to and trust. "When they know me better, they will know that about me." Just by making it to the arena, after all the rough and bitter days and nights when he did not skulk away, Clinton has shown that there is some iron in that core. Unlike Perot, he does not quit when he tires of the ordeal or blame others for his troubles. Clinton will find out in November whether the public came to know him better this week and liked what they saw.

With reporting by Priscilla Painton and Walter Shapiro/New York