Countdown Mentality

By WALTER SHAPIRO LITTLE ROCK

For weeks, the Clinton high command has been consumed by a single statistic -- no, not poll ratings nor the number of times George Bush claims that the Arkansas Governor raised taxes. Rather, the figure that obsesses them is the precise number of days remaining until America votes. Over late-night dinners at favored Little Rock restaurants like Doe's Eat Place, they eagerly parse the digits: Are we now closer to Nov. 3 than to the Democratic Convention? (Yes.) Should we count Election Day itself? (Yes.) On the stump, Clinton betrays the same nervous exactitude about the political calendar, asking students at the University of New Mexico last Friday, "If I fight for 46 days for your future, will you join me?"

This countdown mentality is akin to that of a child reckoning how long he must stay on best behavior until Christmas. The Clinton camp still only half believes the polls -- both the national ones that mostly give them a double- digit lead and their own state surveys that show them clearly ahead in such G.O.P. bastions as Florida, North Carolina and Kentucky. But along with success has come a cautious reluctance to mess with a winning formula. Nothing angers the Clinton cadre like the charge that they are sitting on their lead. "In the past few weeks, we've gone before the American Legion and the National Guard," says a Clinton insider. "If you saw what we did in Salt Lake City, you can't say that we're not taking chances."

Both sides are playing the campaign as if it were an intricate daily chess game. Take the subtle feints and counterfeints behind last Tuesday's back-to- back appearances by Bush and Clinton before the National Guard convention in Salt Lake City. Even the Clinton team admits that Bush played like an international grand master. The first move belonged to the President, who announced at the last minute that he would speak to the National Guard, presumably to attack Clinton on the draft. Clinton responded by scrambling his schedule and racing to Salt Lake City.

Bush, speaking first, surprised Clinton by taking the high road, skirting the draft issue while making an eloquent case that combat experience helps forge a better President. In what Clinton aide Paul Begala calls a rush "cut- and-paste job," the Democratic nominee then deleted an elaborate defense of his draft record from his own speech to change its emphasis to (surprise!) the economy. The result: a drawn game.

The risk is a campaign that revolves around gamesmanship rather than substance. Right after Labor Day, Clinton stepped in to tone down the hyperactivity of the campaign's war room, with its zeal to respond instantly to every G.O.P. charge. The constant counterpunching, Clinton believed, was overshadowing his larger message. Within the campaign, the power of the war room and its generals -- communications director George Stephanopoulos and top strategist James Carville -- has been a source of envy. "It has taken George and Carville months to realize that they have to trust Bill Clinton's instincts," says a well-placed campaign official.

Clinton's instincts these days err on the side of caution. The once accessible candidate now travels almost completely cordoned off from his press corps. Impromptu press conferences are discouraged because as Begala -- the traveling strategist and speechwriter -- puts it, "they just don't look very presidential."

Sensitive to the charge that he has become a promise-them-anything candidate, Clinton last week returned to using some tough-talk words like "responsibility," telling the University of New Mexico students, "No more across-the-board something for nothing." But too often Clinton cannot resist the temptation to gull his audiences with the illusion that the path to painless prosperity can be paved solely with the savings from defense cuts.

For months the Clinton campaign mantra has been "We are not like Michael Dukakis." Nothing better illustrates the difference than the avidity with which Clinton is cramming for his first debate. He has held two preparation sessions with his debate team, focusing on his two most potentially vulnerable areas -- his Arkansas record and foreign policy. On the road, Clinton studies his debate books almost daily. For weeks, aides have worried that Clinton is too wedded to complex six-part answers and too conciliatory to perform as a properly aggressive debater. That is why the goal this time is to give Clinton an overarching theme with which to frame all his debate answers.

But for the moment, the two sides bicker. Focus-group research has convinced the Clinton team that they have a winning issue in Bush's reluctance to debate. Clinton campaign chairman Micky Kantor argues, "If you are going to develop a mandate -- and have a successful presidency -- it is important to use the debate process to reach 90 million Americans." But the rest of the campaign is about a mandate to govern as well. So the question remains: Will Clinton use his lead to talk honestly to the voters, or merely try to nurse it as he counts down the days until Nov. 3?

With reporting by Priscilla Painton with Clinton