Courting Labor, Clinton Steps Up Attacks on GOP

PHILADELPHIA —  President Clinton grabbed center stage Friday in the Democrats’ general election campaign and sought to hang complaints about George Bush the elder around the neck of George W. Bush the son.

Gently chiding at one moment, sarcastic at the next, and feisty throughout, Clinton delivered 44 minutes of red-meat “whoop-de-do lines”--his words--to an eager audience of labor supporters.

The performance was all the more remarkable for the early hour at which the famously slow-starting president spoke: 9 a.m. But there was no sleep in his voice--or in his attack.

Clinton ticked off the issues that separated him and President Bush in 1992. He suggested the younger Bush lacked the intellectual wherewithal required of a president.

And for good measure, he went after First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race in New York.

‘You’ve Got to Watch Them’

His message, which with greater frequency has become the theme of his political appearances, was blunt: Beware of the Republicans, for they are seeking to masquerade as moderates minimizing their differences with Vice President Al Gore, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee.

“They are so clever, you’ve got to watch them. They call me slick?” Clinton said to roars of approval from the 34th international convention of the American Federation of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, a 1.3-million-member union.

“You all listen to this. You’re going to need a shovel to deal with this between now and November,” he said, good-ol’-boy-style, as he chastised Rep. Rick Lazio, his wife’s opponent in New York, for taking offense when challenged on his claim that he supported legislation protecting patients’ rights.

“What did he say? He said, ‘How dare her say such a mean thing. I am for a patients’ bill of rights.’ A patients’ bill of rights?” the president said, launching his criticism of a Republican measure that he says does not go nearly far enough. Then, holding out his necktie, blue with specks of red and yellow, to illustrate his point, he said:

“This tie here, it’s got a little red on it. That don’t mean I’m wearing a red tie.”

At the end of a week that began with the announcement of near-completion of the mapping of the human gene structure--”Man, I had to read up for a year just so I’d understand the announcement I was making,” he said--Clinton implicitly contrasted the understanding that Gore and the younger Bush could bring to such issues.

Referring to genetics, the growth of the Internet and the need to fight global warming while protecting economic growth, Clinton said: “I think somebody ought to be president who understands this stuff.”

One month before the Republican Party will nominate Bush, the Texas governor, not far from the convention center where Clinton spoke early Friday, the president gave a short course on the economic and social progress of the last eight years--unemployment and welfare rolls are down, homeownership and immunizations are up, for example--and said, “A lot of people don’t remember what it was like the last time [the GOP] had the ball and they carried it.”

“Twenty-one million people have taken advantage of the Family and Medical Leave Law, the first law I signed and a law that was vetoed the last time they had the White House,” he said, never mentioning either Bush by name. “Five hundred thousand felons, fugitives and stalkers did not get handguns because of the Brady bill. . . . And the Brady law was another law that was vetoed the last time they had the White House.”

“There are big and honest differences,” the president said, insisting that pointing them out was not a negative attack.

Clinton Takes GOP to Task

“The Republicans have given us the awfulest mugging over the last 20 years, time and time again, and their primary was the roughest primary I ever saw,” Clinton said. “And now they’re acting like we’re being mean and negative if we point out what their positions are.”

He forecast a Republican convention that papers over differences with Democrats. But there are differences, he said, citing those over Democratic programs that would help Medicare recipients pay for medication, expand health insurance for children and provide tax credits for low- and middle-income families’ college tuition payments.

“You’ll have the awfulest time trying to figure out what the differences are. They’re going to love everybody and help everybody and do everything, and it’s just going to be wonderful,” he said.

Later, the president flew to northern New Jersey for a fund-raising lunch at a private home in Englewood, where the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised slightly more than $1 million.

In Philadelphia, the president signed legislation that gives electronic contracts the same legal status as those written on paper and signed in ink. First, he signed it on paper, for legal purposes. Then, for drama, he signed it electronically, by slipping a card into a scanner and using the password “Buddy,” the name of his chocolate Labrador dog.

Showcasing New Technology

“If this had existed 224 years ago, the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have had to come all the way to Philadelphia on July 4th for the Declaration of Independence,” Clinton said during the ceremony held in Congress Hall at Independence National Historic Park. “They could have e-mailed their John Hancocks in.”

The measure, which was passed by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, allows consumers to set up online brokerage accounts, take out mortgages or execute home repair agreements without mailing a printed document endorsed with a handwritten signature.

The electronic signatures are not actual signatures but are executed with passwords, coded “smart” cards and clicks of a computer mouse to verify agreement to provisions of the contract.

The measure is intended to vastly simplify electronic commerce while eliminating a mountain of paperwork.

“Eventually, vast warehouses of paper will be replaced by [computer] servers the size of VCRs,” the president said.