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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 113 lines

                                                                                CLINTON'S PEOPLE, Page 51

A Public Policy Entrepreneur


Domestic-issues coordinator AL FROM yanked the Democrats
back to the center

By MICHAEL DUFFY/LITTLE ROCK


    Al From doesn't look happy to be back in power. Bill
Clinton's chief domestic policy planner for the transition
appears to be under siege: the austere Little Rock office that
From shares with two assistants is strewn with unsolicited
faxes, dotted with little yellow Post-it notes and littered
with long-forgotten telephone messages stamped URGENT. From
endures surprise visits from special-interest pleaders,
insinuating state party officials and reconnoitering reporters.
After politely thanking another briefcase-toting visitor for
the 75-page list of "action items," From sighs. "This," he says
wearily, "is my life."

    Yet From is enjoying a vindication of a kind. During the
1980s, he and a small band of Democratic centrists pioneered
many of the "new" ideas that would eventually help elect the
first Democratic President since 1976. Liberals and some party
leaders who scorned the From crowd's unconventional approaches
to economics, defense spending and education now find
themselves surrounded by moderates whom From has sprinkled
throughout the transition team. After nearly a decade of
brokering ideas, From is now wielding power. "He's the
intellectual godfather of Clinton's candidacy," admitted a
liberal transition official, "and he is going to get some of the
spoils."

    Not bad for a man who spent the past eight years wandering
in the political wilderness. After Ronald Reagan routed Walter
Mondale in 1984, From and a group of mostly Southern Democrats
organized the Democratic Leadership Council (D.L.C.). The group
wanted to yank the party to the right, certain that Democrats
could regain the White House only with fewer appeals to special
interests and more to the predominantly white, politically
moderate, middle-class voters. Pundits predicted the council's
early demise, and Jesse Jackson derided it as "the Southern
White Boys Club." But its diagnosis of the party's ills seemed
to be borne out by the Democrats' lopsided Electoral College
defeats. "We were losing," From recalled, "because the people
weren't buying the message we were selling."

    After George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988, From
helped create the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank
for putting flesh on the leadership council's ideas. The
institute churned out dozens of well-reasoned papers on topics
ranging from welfare reform to national service, catching the
attention of party leaders and presidential aspirants as well
as some nervous Bush White House officials.

    In 1990 Clinton took over as chairman of the D.L.C.,
gathering the proposals into a 44-page agenda titled the New
American Choice. With its emphasis on private-sector growth,
personal responsibility and community service, the booklet
anticipated many of Clinton's campaign proposals, as well as
the party's 1992 platform. Notes Paul Begala, a top Clinton
strategist: "Every oyster needs a grain of sand to make a
pearl. Al From is the grain of sand that made the Clinton
candidacy."

    Others would call From the sand in the party's shoe. A
curmudgeonly Indiana native, he is tolerated more than he is
loved. From grew up in South Bend, graduated from Northwestern
University with a journalism degree and went to work for Lyndon
Johnson in the war on poverty. An anomaly in Democratic
politics -- he is neither pollster, nor consultant, nor
academic, nor public official -- From is responsible less for
crafting the leadership council's proposals than for selling
them. From raised the money, organized the conferences, hired
the experts and started 30 council chapters nationwide. "Al is
the impresario," says Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the
institute and a transition operative. "He's really a public
policy entrepreneur."

    Now that many of those policies have triumphed, From is
marketing the people to carry them out. Kamarck is in charge of
campaign-finance issues; deputy Bruce Reed is a former
leadership-council policy director; William Galston, a longtime
council luminary, is developing the national-service proposal
and helping out on family and children's issues. Three weeks
ago, Clinton named former South Carolina Governor Richard
Riley, a D.L.C. supporter, as the transition personnel director.
Party liberals began to worry out loud about, as one of them put
it, "ideological purity tests."

    That's unlikely under Clinton. It is a measure of the
President-elect's elasticity that both liberals and moderates
believe they own the Arkansas Governor's heart and mind.
Clinton has shrewdly recruited officials from both wings,
creating an internal tension that will probably force him to
slalom back and forth in the White House to keep everyone happy.
"Clinton has rewarded the moderates and rewarded the liberals,"
said a member of the latter camp. "He isn't tipping his hand as
yet." The prominence of From and his minions in Clinton's
operation, however, suggests that one side in the tug-of-war is
already winning some rope.