PERSPECTIVE ON THE INAUGURAL : Try Some Old-Fashioned Idealism : Once again, we’re called to restore our nation, which means putting the general good ahead of self-serving concerns.

From its inception, America has stood for new beginnings. The millions who streamed to these shores from every corner of the globe for five centuries came with expectations of better things. Many, in spite of great difficulties, achieved their fondest dreams--a safer, more prosperous life for themselves and their progeny. Some withered and died, overwhelmed by the harsh challenges of a new world.

Today, as we inaugurate Bill Clinton as 42nd President of the United States, we mark the start of yet another beginning in the country’s history. Not only does the Democratic Party regain the White House after 12 years of Republican rule, but it does so with the first member of the post-World War II generation to hold the office, and to boot, the third-youngest man, after Teddy Roosevelt and John Kennedy, to serve as chief executive.

It is all heady stuff, reminding us of other inaugurals, when Woodrow Wilson offered us his New Freedom, Franklin Roosevelt promised us a New Deal, and J.F.K. challenged us to conquer a New Frontier. As Clinton prepared himself for his inaugural, he remembered the national craving for change that brought him victory in the campaign. The bus that carried him and his family and the Gores along Thomas Jefferson’s route from Virginia to Washington bore the license plate Hope 1. “I want to be faithful to Jefferson’s idea that about once in a generation you have to shake things up and face your problems,” Clinton said during a stop at Monticello. “Let us build an American home for the 21st Century where everyone has a place at the table and not a single child is left behind,” he later told the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial.

Clinton knows that the first goal of a new President in uncertain times is the restoration of optimism. Like Lincoln, F.D.R. and Kennedy, he wants to inspire the nation to recommit itself to bold designs and a spirit of self-sacrifice. Like Lyndon Johnson, who asked Americans to pledge themselves to a Great Society, he aims to expand the economy at the same time he leads the nation to “build a richer life of mind and spirit.”

Yet as a close student of the country’s history, he also understands that high-minded rhetoric promising a new age of prosperity at home and greater stability abroad can create more problems than it solves. He knows that disappointed hopes stirred by Wilson’s belief that World War I could be the “war to end all wars” largely destroyed his presidency. He knows that Johnson’s rhetoric about ending poverty became a source of derision when the Vietnam war preempted funding for the war on poverty.

Clinton needs to remind Americans that--in the words of Jack Kennedy--his program of change “will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

None of this will be easy. In the 2 1/2 months since his election, Clinton has already come under attack for backing off on promises to middle-class folks for a tax cut, to minorities for a government as diverse as the nation, to Haitians for a safe haven and to the whole country for a reduced deficit and national debt.

Yet it is not only the new President who needs to practice a delicate balancing act by restoring hope at the same time he discourages expectations of quick fixes for the national economy and world catastrophes of famine and war. Opposing politicians, the media and ordinary citizens across this vast nation need to practice the politics of common sense and restraint.

They need to accept the painful realities that addressing national and international problems will require. Reducing the disabling national debt and restoring the economy to long-term health will not come without higher taxes on gasoline and on well-off Social Security recipients and holders of large fortunes. Nor are these things possible without cost control on health-care entitlements, a larger pool of national savings and massive investment in a modern infrastructure. We will also need to accommodate ourselves to the ongoing demands for military and economic interventions overseas. As Somalia and Iraq and Bosnia and Russia have made so clear over the past several weeks, world problems cannot be put on hold while we address daunting challenges at home.

Perhaps most of all, we need to recommit ourselves to some old-fashioned American idealism--to the propositions that citizenship carries with it responsibilities and that the general good deserves to stand ahead of self-serving concerns. Is it too much to hope that an aroused citizenry will join Bill Clinton in seeking solutions to national problems rather than complaining about his failure to find instant answers to everyone’s felt needs?