The Long Road

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Some other qualities also helped enormously. An intuitive feel for the popular mood enabled Clinton to sense early not only that economics would dominate the race but also that voters longed for a candidate who had thought long enough about the problems to formulate detailed plans and talk specifics. (The campaign thus marked a rare convergence of man and moment: Clinton is a born policy wonk who spawns 5- and 6-point plans as instinctively as other pols reach out for hands to shake.) Sheer dogged persistence kept him slogging past low points at which many another campaigner would have given up. In New Hampshire, when the Governor's campaign looked like a collapsing balloon, an aide reported that "his instinct is always to do more": more speeches, more interviews, more TV talk shows, more plunging into crowds. He did -- and it worked, then and later.

Persistence was joined to a stern self-control. Under constant fire, Clinton kept his cool. Throughout the seemingly endless campaign he lost his temper only occasionally, such as the time during the early primaries when Clinton received a false report that Jesse Jackson had endorsed his rival Tom Harkin and went ballistic into an open microphone. Most of the time, Clinton remained ever affable and was never distracted from hammering home, over and over again, the same message: The nation demands change, and I'm the candidate with a plan to produce it. Or, in the now famous wording of the sign that top strategist James Carville hung on the wall of headquarters to explain what the campaign is about: THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

Moreover, the Governor, for all his policy-wonkness, exhibited a genuine love for and total engagement in the political process. His wife Hillary and aides were often hard pressed to persuade him to catch some sleep. Clinton frequently wanted to go on to yet another rally and make another speech well past midnight, then sit up talking strategy with his campaign team almost till dawn. He spoke so incessantly, even while troubled with allergies, that much of the nation heard his voice become increasingly hoarse. Preparing for the first TV confrontation with Bush and Perot on Oct. 11, in fact, some aides were worried that "Bill's voice will go in the middle of the debate," as one put it. As tens of millions of viewers know, it did not happen.

PARADISE WITHOUT PAIN?

Most of these traits will obviously serve Clinton well if he does move into the Oval Office. But some others are more useful for a campaigner than for a President -- and in fact are giving Bush at long last an opening for attack. Clinton hates to alienate anyone and has a pronounced tendency to promise everything to everybody. His standard speech used to contain this all- embracing passage: "We can be pro-growth and pro-environment, we can be pro-business and pro-labor, we can make government work again by making it more aggressive and leaner and more effective at the same time, and we can be pro-family and pro-choice."

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