Bill Clinton: Front Runner By Default

Bill Clinton has the unlined, open face of a man who has had it too easy. True, his father died before he was born, and he grew up poor in the southwest Arkansas town of Hope (pop. 10,000). But Clinton was Hope's Doogie Howser, succeeding at everything he tried, the darling of his teachers and one of the first from the area to go to college. He got his bachelor's degree at Georgetown University, won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, then went on to Yale Law School, where he met his wife Hillary. By 1979, 32 years old and back in Arkansas, he was the youngest Governor in the country.

Two years later, Clinton was the youngest ex-Governor in the country. In Pea Ridge and the Ozarks, the voters resented the notion that this whiz kid had returned home to put shoes on everybody and introduce them to book learning. Says Carrick Patterson, former editor of the Arkansas Gazette: "They thought he had gotten too big for his britches." Clinton admits that he took too much for granted. He hiked license-tag fees. The fact that his wife used her maiden name and that the family was not a member of any organized religion did not help either.

By 1982 Hillary Rodham was answering to Hillary Clinton and the family was worshiping regularly at Little Rock's Immanuel Baptist Church. But mostly Clinton was two years older and chastened. He was re-elected, with 55% of the vote.

Are things once again going too smoothly for Clinton? At 45, he has a decade in the statehouse behind him. After Mario Cuomo took himself out of the race for the White House, Clinton became his party's media-anointed front runner. He may soon discover that the worst thing that can happen to a candidate is to be too far ahead too soon. The political press corps, which prides itself on how quickly it can knock the stuffing out of those who would run for President, has gone into a deep swoon over his candidacy, from which it will sooner or later recover. For the moment, reporters seem entranced by Clinton's persona: a good-government geek saved by a self-deprecating sense of humor. As chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that wants to yank the party back to the center, Clinton's idea of a well-spent weekend is one given to working on welfare and education reform. Yet when he was introduced at a forum in New Hampshire as the smartest of the candidates, he quipped, "Isn't that a little like calling Moe the most intelligent of the Three Stooges?"

Last summer, when rumors swirled about Clinton's alleged extramarital affairs, some reporters thought they might have another Gary Hart in their sights. But Clinton smoothly deflected the inevitable "have you ever" question at a Washington breakfast meeting with journalists. With Hillary sitting next to him pushing scrambled eggs around her plate, he said their 16- year marriage, like others, had had its ups and downs, but "we believe in our obligation to each other." So far, an army of reporters has failed to uncover a smoking bimbo.

In the first televised debate among the candidates, Clinton acted as though he were the returning champion on Jeopardy while the others, especially Jerry Brown, behaved as if they were on Let's Make a Deal. Clinton, seated on the end, maintained an air of detachment, speaking only when called upon by quizmaster Tom Brokaw. He managed to squeeze in concern for the middle class about as often as Bob Kerrey referred to his war record.