NEWS ANALYSIS : Debate Gambit Aims to Fire Up Campaign

With Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton comfortably maintaining a double-digit lead over President Bush in most polls since Labor Day, many Republicans have grown increasingly concerned that “a sheet of ice was forming over this campaign,” as one consultant recently put it.

With his bold proposal Tuesday to debate Clinton four times through the end of the campaign, Bush has moved emphatically to try to break the ice.

The drama of the gesture--which was immediately deflected by Clinton--partly reflects the love of surprise shared by Bush and White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III. But, many observers say, it also illustrates a more fundamental reality: that the White House efforts to revive Bush’s campaign by more conventional means--attacking Clinton and trumpeting the President’s economic plan--had stalled.

“I think everybody has come to the same conclusion: We need to shake things up,” says GOP consultant David M. Carmen.

For the same reason, White House officials and campaign strategists have become increasingly open in their desire to see Texas billionaire Ross Perot--who has said he could declare his intentions as soon as Thursday--re-enter the presidential race.

No one in either campaign is certain whether Perot would hurt Bush or Clinton if he rejoined the contest. Likewise, no one in either camp is sure whether Bush or Clinton would benefit from so many debates so late in the campaign. And no one is certain how these two factors would combine--whether Perot’s presence would heighten attention on the debates, or simply diffuse their impact.

But for Republicans all of these uncertainties are an improvement over the solidifying gloom of the last two weeks--when Clinton, despite all their efforts to sow doubts about him, has appeared to consolidate his lead.

Recent polls have shown Clinton holding daunting margins in such key states as California, Illinois and Missouri; double-digit leads in such battlegrounds as Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and even remaining ahead of Bush in such Republican strongholds as Arizona, Alaska, Connecticut and Alabama.

Republican strategists are also bracing for the release of the latest unemployment figures on Friday. After two months of small improvements, many economists expect the unemployment numbers--the last that will be released before Election Day--to slightly deteriorate.

Between all of those clouds, Republicans see at least two glimmers of good news in this week’s developments. In most states, polls now show Perot drawing somewhat more of his vote away from Clinton than Bush--thus slightly narrowing the gap the President would have to surmount in a three-way race.

Republicans also hope that the debate initiative will help them regain control of the campaign dialogue. Clinton immediately countered the offer, calling for Bush to participate in the next two debates scheduled by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, then to work through the commission if he wants to schedule more.

Acknowledging that refusing to debate sooner had hurt Bush, one Republican strategist close to the White House said: “We’ll see how Clinton likes it--and how long he can keep it up.”

Bush’s proposal was undeniably a bold stroke. If accepted, it would mean the most debates in any presidential campaign since 1960--when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon faced off four times. Such a sequence of face-to-face encounters would also dominate the rest of the campaign, strategists in both camps say.

As one senior Clinton official noted, each debate would lead the news for at least three days--the day before the event, the day of it and the day after. Add to that the requirement for increased debate preparation time, the official said, and such an intensive schedule of debates could virtually consume the remaining 35 days before the election.

“If they do the four debates,” agreed Republican consultant Carmen, “it will be the campaign.”

Officials at the White House and the Bush campaign were gleeful about the President’s offer and Clinton’s response.

“We got a line for you here,” a senior White House official said triumphantly: “We put down a challenge and we got back a waffle.”

“Don’t talk to us about who wants debates,” the official said. “I think they are probably in there with their hair on fire.”

The officials interpreted Clinton’s response as a sign that the Democrat remains hopeful of wrapping up the debates early while he still holds a lead. Bush, instead, wants to give himself every chance to score a last-minute coup.

One campaign official, who has been involved in debate planning, said the GOP wanted to keep the campaign as fluid as possible right up until Election Day--hence the unprecedented proposal for a debate on the Sunday two days before the voting occurs.

“We didn’t want to debate in September,” the official added. “People aren’t focused on the campaign then, and it freezes the campaign too early.”

One Bush aide conceded that the new Republican debate strategy would allow for the White House to seize on the kinds of last-minute personal revelations about Clinton for which presidential loyalists are still plainly hoping. With the last debate under the Bush plan to be held so close to the election, “anything could happen,” the aide said.

In the Clinton camp, Bush’s sudden offer was viewed as a sign that “they’re in trouble,” as the senior official put it. From the start, many Clinton advisers have viewed debates as his best opportunity to reassure voters he has the stature and skill to sit in the Oval Office; some have believed Bush’s previous refusal to debate was driven by concern that Clinton could use the forum to efface the White House’s portrait of him.

With this new offer on the table, the senior official said, it is now likely there will be several debates, “but I don’t know how they will be structured at this point.”

On both sides, the sudden White House offer was seen in part as evidence of how a renewed Perot candidacy could unpredictably scramble the race. Some Administration officials acknowledged that Perot’s potential return--and the prospect that Clinton and Perot might embarrass Bush by debating without him--forced the President’s hand.

“You have the Perot factor. He’s going to get in. What if the commission says, ‘Fine, we’ll be in San Diego’? Then we have to eat crow. That clock was ticking. We’d get crucified,” a Bush official said.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl in Washington contributed to this story.