NEWS ANALYSIS : Abroad, Clinton Keeps an Eye on Home Front

By the luck of the draw, President Clinton was the last to speak at the opening session of the Group of Seven economic summit Wednesday. When his turn finally came at the closed-door meeting, he offered a political message to his fellow leaders:

“We have got to make this thing relevant to ordinary people,” a senior aide quoted Clinton as saying.

That advice has much to do with Clinton’s own political experience. Eight months ago, he won the presidency in large part because many Americans pictured George Bush as a man who cared more about international summits than about domestic jobs.

Clinton has been determined to convey a very different image--that of a man focused on the home front and its problems.

At the same time, he wants to assume the President’s traditional role as the undisputed leader of what used to be called the Free World back when the Cold War almost inevitably conferred leadership on the man with the world’s largest arsenal.

Clinton aides readily concede that those two goals conflict. To reconcile them, the President and his advisers have been relentless in insisting that the decisions made here mean jobs for Americans back home.

Indeed, the word jobs pops out virtually every time either Clinton or one of his top officials opens his mouth. On Wednesday night, for example, during a brief statement to reporters on the international trade agreement that negotiators had worked out earlier in the day, Clinton uttered the word jobs four times in roughly 90 seconds.

To highlight the issue even further, Clinton announced a proposal for an international “jobs summit” in the speech in San Francisco that he gave just before leaving for Tokyo.

Although aides concede that they have done very little work to flesh out how such a meeting would be conducted or precisely what its goals would be, Clinton wanted to make the announcement in large part to focus public attention on the jobs dimension of the summit meeting.

The answer that Clinton has tried to convey is that “it is in the interests of each and every American” because in the increasingly global economy, U.S. prosperity cannot be separated from the prosperity of other nations.

The irony, of course, is that Bush believed precisely the same thing--and at times even tried to explain his ideas to American voters--but never succeeded.

Clinton himself told aides he thought the other leaders present--politicians all, and all in political trouble at home--appreciated his focus, seeing it as a potential benefit to them as well.

He has argued to his aides that much of the political difficulty that the G-7 leaders of the world’s most advanced industrial nations face is not a result of the depth of their countries’ economic problems; rather it is caused by peoples’ uncertainty about the future and doubts about what their governments are doing to help them.

“He feels that he can help others through his experiences” in winning the fall election, a senior adviser said of Clinton. “Every one of these nations is going through periods of slow growth, discontent, months of employment not keeping pace. The only way you help people through hard times is by speaking directly to them.”

Given Clinton’s emphasis on the politics of economics, it is, perhaps, no surprise that aides say his closest personal relationship among the G-7 partners so far has been with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a man sometimes ridiculed in his own country for his lack of intellectual sophistication but a politician who has a keen appreciation for the concerns and reactions of the average citizen.

Whether or not Clinton’s emphasis has been the deciding factor, this summit--in sharp contrast to previous economic summits--actually has been primarily about economics. At many past summit meetings, the heads of government or state have spent the minimum time necessary talking about subjects such as the negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and then plunged into what they really cared about: political issues.