NEWS ANALYSIS

Reaching back to the strongest traditions of his party, President Clinton chose a sharply adversarial tone for his first nationally broadcast speech to the nation Monday--one that provides a foretaste of what Clinton’s aides expect will be a bitterly fought battle to sell his economic program over the months to come.

Clinton flatly--and for the first time--admitted that he has abandoned one tenet of his campaign. “I had hoped,” he said, addressing America’s vast middle class, to prepare an economic plan “without asking more of you. . . . But I can’t.”

In a classic piece of political leveraging, however, he used that admission as a springboard to what he termed a “call to arms,” summoning up images of a legion of “high priced lobbyists” poised to act as “defenders of decline” and already prepared to begin fighting his program the moment it is announced.

“At stake is the control of our economic destiny,” Clinton said, asking his audience to support his plans in the name of “patriotism.”

That sort of appeal “is what presidential rhetoric is all about,” said Georgetown University political science professor Michael Robinson. In using populist rhetoric, denouncing lobbyists and portraying himself as engaged in a war with the special interests, Clinton adopted precisely the sorts of language that Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman both used in trying to propel their programs through Congress.

And although there is little evidence that a single speech by itself likely will have much impact in rallying public support, the sort of language Clinton used is among the most powerful types of appeals a President can make.

At the same time, warned Republican strategist Ken Khachigian, “that sort of rhetoric is a two-edged sword. If the public believes him and gets caught up in it, they can rally to him. On the other hand, if the cynics will see it as an affirmation of the old quote that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”

Clinton and his aides put together Monday night’s speech with two goals in mind--making the case that the President’s plan will be fair to the middle class and convincing Americans to associate the pain of his program with the Republicans, from whom he inherited the deficit.

The fairness argument is a crucial one for Clinton. Voters obviously do not like the idea of tax increases--one does not need a sophisticated poll to know that most Americans will turn thumbs down on a tax increase unless they are convinced it is necessary. Yet at the same time, polls do show that voters will accept tax increases if they believe the money will be used wisely and if they believe the increases are fair.

Over the past decade, “fairness” has become a powerful weapon for the Democrats in the battles over the federal budget. Voters have often doubted the ability of Democrats to manage the economy but in most years have agreed by large margins that if taxes had to be raised, Democrats would be more likely than Republicans to handle the increases in a fair manner.

During George Bush’s term as President, the Democrats managed to use the fairness argument to kill GOP initiatives--most notably burying proposals to cut the capital gains tax rate, arguing that the cut would disproportionately help the wealthy.

Clinton’s arguments about making the wealthy pay their share, and his assurances that 70% of the tax increases in his plan will fall on those earning more than $100,000 per year, were designed to bolster that argument that he and his party will do better than Republicans would in making economic sacrifice fair.

Clinton advisers also believe it is crucial for him to persuade the public at the outset that the circumstances he inherited make the tax increases and spending cuts he plans to call for necessary.

“The danger is you if talk about sacrifice too much, people begin to associate it with you,” said one longtime Clinton adviser. Former President Jimmy Carter, for example, lost considerable ground with the public by constantly stressing sacrifice and deprivation during the largely unsuccessful campaign for his national energy program in the late 1970s, the adviser noted. The image of Carter wearing a sweater and speaking about national “malaise” became a much-parodied symbol of a political leader who appeared to many Americans to be out of touch with their lives.

In both the timing and the aims of his speech, Clinton took one more page from the old Ronald Reagan playbook. Reagan, too, gave a televised speech to the nation before he unveiled his economic program a dozen years ago, using the broadcast to blame the nation’s economic woes on his predecessor, Jimmy Carter.

Clinton’s top aides made no apologies for borrowing from Reagan’s manual even as they seek to reverse his policies.

“I think what you’re going to see in this package is a reversal of Reaganomics, a reversal of the last 12 years,” White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said. “We think he was following the wrong goals, the wrong priorities, and that his plan hurt the country, but he sold it successfully.”