Presidential Candidates United States

The hardened boys who came of age in this dirt-poor farm hamlet during the 1950s had no illusions about their place in the world. Their extended Irish families taught them a reality as cold and brutal as a Midwest winter's morning. They faced life at the bottom of the heap. Within the Harkin clan, whose numbers teemed through the countryside, Tom Harkin and his family had it worst of all. His mother had died when he was 10 years old. An older half-brother was deaf.

More than seven months before the first presidential primary, President Clinton's reelection campaign has spent $1 million on television ads in a novel attempt to reshape his image around what aides believe to be one of his most politically appealing themes. The campaign has bought spots that will run next month in a dozen states, including California, to drum up public support for the year-old assault weapons ban and the Administration's program to add police in communities nationwide.

As the haze of anesthesia receded, Bob Kerrey could make out the anxious faces of his parents against the bleak walls of the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. He summoned Elinor Kerrey to his side, and muttered: "How much is left?" Military doctors had struggled to undo the mess that a crude North Vietnamese grenade had made of his right leg, but a spreading bone infection left no option but to amputate mid-calf.

"Facts don't matter--stories matter"--Ross Perot, on the election process IN MID-APRIL, ON A SUNNY SATURDAY IN PITTSBURGH, THE PIRATES BEAT THE Phillies and the afternoon crowd came spilling from the stadium in high good humor. The conspicuous, unsmiling men were from the Secret Service.

Larry Agran is sitting at a horseshoe-shaped table with his habitual steadiness, awaiting the start of the cable network talk show "Week in Review." Around the table are Susan Estrich, Michael Dukakis' former presidential campaign manager, and pollster Patrick Caddell, a leading consultant to Jimmy Carter's 1976 White House bid.

APPEAL PROBLEMS: "Electability" was the spark behind Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's early drive to the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest. But a close look at exit polls in New Hampshire, where Clinton finished second to former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas in last Tuesday's primary, raises questions about Clinton's chances in November.

The five major Democratic presidential candidates clashed on issues that have been lost in the fray this year--agriculture and American Indian affairs--in a televised Sunday night debate that they hoped would shift the electorate their way in Tuesday's primary. But the showstopper of the evening was not one of the big names but a feisty newcomer to the public stage, former Irvine Mayor Larry Agran.

President Bush, feisty but fighting fatigue, and Patrick J. Buchanan, just plain feisty, sparred with sharpened rhetoric across the dreary and rain-splattered landscape of southern New Hampshire on Sunday to pursue the last undecided voters in Tuesday's crucial Republican primary election. With little time left, tempers were fraying and the candidates were snapping ever more pointedly, both camps accusing the other of late-in-the-game desperation.

In happier days--Wednesday, for instance--this was the place to be. On Thursday, the mood at Ross Perot's Los Angeles County campaign headquarters in Sherman Oaks was still red, white and blue, but mostly blue. "The party is over," Ed Haas of Reseda said as he sat dejected at the back of the Ventura Boulevard storefront. "Now the hero, the man in the white hat, turns out to be just another . . . rat."

Oh, what a tangled web politics and TV have woven in this election year. With the Democratic National Convention unfolding next week, nothing has dramatized this entanglement more than the risky and exhilarating new era of TV talk-back campaigning. It is adversarial, in-your-face truth or consequences. And it is historic. Politics hasn't changed, but technology has--and to the victor in understanding this will go the spoils.

The peculiar political geometry of 1992's triangular presidential contest may be increasing the risks that surround negative campaigning, forcing all three contenders to rethink the tactics they employ in attacking their opponents. "It means you have to be very smart, you have to be very good," says Hamilton Jordan, campaign strategist for undeclared candidate Ross Perot. "The dynamics are different."

The summertime image to be forged for soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton has been whittled down to its essence: Here is a small-town boy who can fix the economy. Hoping to take advantage of voter dissatisfaction with the performance of President Bush, Clinton is laying plans to reintroduce himself to voters with a hard-hitting assault on the Administration's economic record and a simultaneous emotional appeal based on his upbringing in rural Arkansas.

Nearly 200 people gathered at a midmorning rally alongside Tony's Liquor store in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday to hear a man who midway through his speech admitted he had not talked to H. Ross Perot in 40 years. Nobody seemed to care. The crowd cheered mere mention of the Texas billionaire whose nationwide grass-roots bid for President was compared by gushing San Fernando Valley supporters to the sentiment that carried Proposition 13. "We need a change.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton got a big cheer when he donned a Monroe High School sweat shirt, sporting the blue and red of the fighting Vikings. And they applauded most of his "for the people" remarks on everything from condoms in public schools to civil rights. But the Democratic presidential candidate also discovered Wednesday that Monroe students could be a tough audience and perhaps even tougher voters--those who are old enough. "I love the way he's talking," said Kawana Anderson, 15.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton jumped to an early lead in Virginia's two-day Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday, capturing 52.6% of the delegates with about 60% of the vote tallied. Uncommitted delegates won 32.5% of the vote, while former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. tallied 14.8%.

Former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.--his campaign for the White House reeling from defeat--returned to California on Saturday and struck a rare conciliatory stance toward his party's front-runner, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. In comments to reporters at the Democratic state convention in Los Angeles, Brown for the first time offered unconditional backing of the party's nominee, who most political analysts now presume will be Clinton.