NOW FOR THE LAST CAMPAIGN

By JAMES CARNEY WASHINGTON

There are moments, like the one the other day in Ottawa, when Bill Clinton may wonder why he is bothering to run for re-election. At the end of a summit with Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Clinton was asked by an American reporter if it was true, as a local newspaper had suggested, that he had traveled to Canada more as a "titular" leader than an actual one, given how power had shifted to the Republican-controlled Congress. Clinton bristled. "Unless I miss my guess, a bill doesn't become law unless I sign it or it passes over my veto," he said evenly. Then he delivered a blistering assessment of the G.O.P. agenda as "radical right wing" and "an attack on ... kids." To conclude, he said, "I don't consider myself a titular head of state, and until there is some evidence to the contrary, you shouldn't either."

The President may protest too much. The evidence of his marginalization is as much a matter of presumption as fact, but that is no less of a problem for him. The Ottawa exchange highlighted Clinton's re-election quandary: his first opponent is not a Republican, not even an upstart Demo-crat; it is the perception of his own irrelevance. Though Clinton's job-approval ratings have hovered near respectability in recent months, a large chunk of the electorate doesn't think he can win in 1996; almost half, in one poll, believes the country would be better off if he didn't run.

The same questions linger now as they did for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George Bush in 1992: What is the rationale for a second term? After his party's drubbing in last November's midterms, what can Clinton offer that will convince voters he should be President for six more years instead of two? The President's nascent re-election team believes it has found at least one answer in the public's level of discomfort with the Republican agenda. No longer able to advance much of his own legislative program, Clinton is positioning himself as a bulwark against his opponents' excesses, an above-the-fray arbiter protecting the otherwise undefended-women, senior citizens, minorities, working families, the whole middle class-against Republican zealots.

To sell that point and persuade voters that he still matters, Clinton has been pursuing a kind of 12-votes-at-a-time strategy. On a recent visit to a community college in San Bernardino, California, he sat around a table with a dozen local residents for a closed-door discussion of his education policies and Republican plans to "cut and gut" important programs. He emerged after an hour radiating enthusiasm. Turning to his chief of staff, Leon Panetta, Clinton said, "If you let me do that every time we go out on the road, you'll have a happy President." More than that, he said, "I also think we might do ourselves some good."

Clinton has always been persuasive in person, especially in small groups. And there is an advantage to removing Clinton from Washington, where the Republican leaders of Congress often make him look like a bystander. White House officials have also discovered that Clinton can more easily appear the leader in opposition than in power, fighting against things instead of for them. It is an odd, frustrating position for someone who arrived in Washington two years ago brimming with ideas, promising change and assuring the public that he and the Dem-ocratic Congress would break gridlock. This year his most notable acts as President will be to create gridlock, with vetoes of Republican legislation he considers extreme. Whether the fight is over Clinton's program to fund 100,000 more police or the survival of his national-service youth corps, the White House hopes the public will credit the President for standing on principle. And as a senior Clinton adviser happily predicts, "Every veto will be front-page news."

The goal: to survive until the fall without a major crisis and with a few successful vetoes under his belt. By then, Clinton's advisers hope, he will have established himself again as a plausible contender for his own title. But two developments could seriously imperil Clinton's chances before he gets even that far. The first is scandal: the combined spectacle of several top Administration officials under investigation by independent counsels as well as Clinton's Whitewater troubles. The second is a rebellion from within his own party. The President's political advisers have been scanning the horizon since November for signs of a challenger. Yet even if party elders urged him to quit the race to make room for another Democrat, Clinton would almost certainly refuse. Says a source who knows Clinton well: "He could be at 20% approval in the polls, and he would still run."

Of the Democrats cited as possible candidates, only Jesse Jackson is showing signs of running. Nevertheless, skittishness over the possibility of a Democratic challenger is driving most of the tactical decision making by Clinton's campaign advisers, led by deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes. "The first order of business," says a top Clinton aide, "is to make sure we don't have a primary opponent." To that end, Clinton has been turning to traditional party constituencies with public offerings. Among them: his proposal to increase the minimum wage, a move favored by unions, and his effort to turn the fight for the Henry Foster nomination into a defense of a woman's right to an abortion.

Even with a clear path to his party's nomination, Clinton will have to justify a second term in light of the likely judgment that his first four years were not a wild success. The President's advisers insist Clinton's future will look brighter once a Republican opponent emerges. "Politics is a binary game," says Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary. "There are winners and losers, and the choice will be between Clinton and someone who offers a contrasting vision." In the comparison of his vision against Bob Dole's or Phil Gramm's, Clinton's aides believe their man becomes credible again.

Clinton's vision in 1996 will be only a modified version of the old. He will emphasize his deficit-reducing credentials and his record on downsizing government, but he will adhere to his faith that government is not all bad, that it should do more than get out of the way, that it should create opportunity instead. He will point to polls that show Americans still want health-care reform and will promise to find a way to deliver it. He will talk about the 21st century, about the need for more education reform and better technology policies. And, as senior adviser George Stephanopoulos says, he will portray himself as the candidate with "the energy and intellect of a young man, plus the experience of someone who's been President."

There is still something startling about that, the notion that Bill Clinton has been President. He is 48, in the middle of a life defined by running for office, and by the ambition to occupy the White House. Yet he has now begun his last campaign. And he does it having to combat the perception that his time has already passed. Nevertheless, says Mack McLarty, one of Clinton's oldest friends and now a counselor to the President, "he feels quite hopeful. He's not frustrated or blue or disappointed. He has an ability to adapt, to figure out a way to get things done." In this case, getting things done means becoming the first Democrat to win two terms since Franklin Roosevelt. And if he succeeds, Clinton will have one more thing to figure out: how to turn victory's reward into something more than four years of frustration.