The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 19

THE BOSTON GLOBE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1992 ALEX BEAM A bid to steer the Clinton campaign back on course THOMAS OUPHANT Eek! A mouse! NEW YORK ooking for a different candidate for president?" That got my at tention in a flash. Like lawyers leading a cross-examination, cam threat to Clinton's previously clear lead in his tracking polls a very low turnout stemming from a lack of enthusiasm for the presumed front-runner. The ad had its generic origin in a plaintive observation by the candidate during a Staff conference call as it became clear he was heading for trouble in Connecticut two weeks ago. "These people don't know I have a plan," Clinton said, asking that more copies be print-, ed of his domestic policy prescriptions in the form that was once advertised as available in the public libraries of New Hampshire. Clinton was right on the money.

Once a model of comprehensiveness and grand strategy, this campaign has been blown off course by the controversies spawned by Clinton's private life, Vietnam-era biography, public record, and his bad habit of responding incompletely to each. It has been blown even further off course by the tactical imperatives of dealing with the threats posed first by Paul Tsongas and now by Brown. More to the point, the New York ad had its origins in the comments of a female Democratic voter 11 days ago in, of all places, Alaska. pete and win in a tougher world. "That's the plan of a different candidate," the commercial concluded, only then identifying this bold individual as "the real Bill Clinton." This was the commercial message into which the Clinton campaign poured much of its depleted cash reserves for the last 36 hours of the New York campaign.

Unnoticed among the final shouting matches with Jerry Brown on 'Today," the comic comity of the Clinton-Brown discussion on the Donahue show, and the end-game speeches, the ad was much more revealing. At the end, the Clinton folks felt it essential to address New York's dissatisfaction with the existing candidates, as well as the fact that Democrats here had very little idea what a Clinton presidency might entail. What is more, the commercial's creative defensiveness reflected an awareness of Clinton's lightning-rod status at this stage of the campaign thus its unusual technique of withholding Clinton's name until the end. And finally, the commercial was a big part of an effort at the end to deal with the only Mandy Grunwald, an important Clinton adviser who works wjth his media man, Frank Greer, was in the Klondike for a client-candidate for the Senate; in the course of a structured discussion with voters, the woman in question spoke up. Discussing the presidential race, she described Clinton as not having an idea in his head.

She went on to list her own concerns, the same ones ultimately mentioned in the commercial. What jarred Grunwald, of course, was that she was describing specific Clinton positions. It didn't matter that she was from Alaska; given the press' preoccupation with anything but issues here, the woman could have been from Queens. On the phone with Greer and senior Clinton strategist James Carville, the commercial took shape. But the Clinton campaign hasn't In pre-Gennifer Flowers New Hampshire, ads like this reflected Clinton in real campaign life.

Result: a surge in his support. Here, however, one lonely commercial was a commentary on what's missing. And only Clinton can supply it. Thomas Olipkant is a Globe columnist paign commercials are never supposed to pose questions for which the answers are not already known. I Here was a message aimed directly at one ot the dominant desires of most of the Democrats who voted here yesterday.

I Hooked, I opened my brain to the punch lines. The ad defined "different" as a candidacy that offered solutions to America's problems, and it named some that this different fellow was offering: I An end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas; incentives for expanding jobs at home; higher standards for teachers and kids in the schools; affordable health care; a Jway to move welfare recipients to jobs; a commitment to healing racial divisions; and an activist economic policy to help the US com Peru's perilous path PARIS Is Paris burning? You'd certainly think so, judging by the thick columns of hot air rising over the City of Light. Barbarians at the gate? No, just Mickey Mouse. Euro-Disneyland opens Sunday at Marne-la-Vallee, 20 miles east of Paris, and the French are having fits. A leading intellectual has condemned the Disney resort as a "cul: tural Chernobyl." A columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur, invoking the hallowed memory of Paris' 1968 student riots, called on French youth to burn Euro-Disney to the ground.

As always with the French, one wonders: Pourquoi le brouhaha? Not to worry. Every 10 years or so, the French treat themselves to a identity crisis, from which they in evitably emerge more convinced than ever of their superiority to the rest of us. America and things American pose a great dilemma for the French, who have never known whether to love us or hate us. The' French worship American kitsch -Jerry Lewis and Clint Eastwood are Parisian culture heroes but condemn America's consumer in between bites of Big Macs. Among other affronts, the Normandy invasion still sticks in many a well-lubricated Gallic craw.

Comments one French writer bemused by the outbreak of Disneyphobia: "We've never really forgiven thfe; Americans for liberating us." And in the case of Euro-Disney they asked for it. Like the good burghers of Anaheim and Orlando, the French government begged Dis-; ney to locate in Paris. It created A stamp with soul DERRICK Z. JACKSON jUgiSKJWmMI Ill II. II1J.I..W y- i I Elvis stamp? How American to have a national debate over who stole African- A GLOBE FILE PHOTOS In '60s, too tough to 'Give it Up' mocracy that Bush administration officials had spent months desperately trying to polish to justify US military aid to Peru's government.

Fujimori, it turned out, was a military man in civilian clothes. He assumed power in July 1990 without the backing of an organized political party and was confronted by a legislature skeptical of his leadership and policies. Fujimori's response was to align himself with the military as his base of support. He appointed an active-duty army general as head of the ministry of the interior and promulgated unprecedented decrees to give the military sweeping control over civilian life. He said last December that the "two pillars" of his administration "are the armed forces and the people." By the end of 1991, half the country's population was living under a military state of emergency.

When Peruvian politicians annulled and amended many of Fujimori's decrees, the president fired the politicians. The long affair between Fujimori and the military thus finally became formalized in marriage. In a speech announcing the shotgun wedding, Fujimori attempted to provide an explanation, partly packaged for foreign consumption. To appease international critics (especially US policy makers obsessed with Peru's poor record on the drug-war front), Fujimori de clared that the dissolution of Congress was necessary because it had "demonstrated weakness" in the war against drugs an issue that is ly Washington's top priority but Peru's last. "Peru cannot continue debilitating itself through the work of terrorism, drug trafficking and corruption," Fujimori stated.

In effect, Fujimori justified killing what little democracy Peru had in order to save it. Peru's military immediately released a statement declaring support for the president's action: "We are absolutely convinced that correcting the institutional crisis requires the taking of immediate emergency measures in order to achieve the reconstruction of the country." A military-led "reconstruction," of course, can only further polarize a country ravaged by a 12-year internal war between the Shining Path insurgents and the government that has already claimed more than 23,000 lives. Shining Path has long awaited this coup, hoping that it will force Peruvians to choose between two brutal extremes. If Washington's response in the critical days and weeks ahead is as meek as it was during the Haitian coup, it will be clear what side the US has taken. Peter Andreas is a research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies.

PETER ANDREAS WASHINGTON While the Bush administration has repeatedly argued that military aid to Peru is vital to democracy and the fight against drug trafficking, it now seems that Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and his military backers have become a far greater threat to Peruvian democracy than drugs. On Sunday, democratic politics finally became too much of a nuisance to Fujimori. When Peru's Congress refused to rubber-stamp his sweeping political and economic decrees, he simply shut down the political system by dissolving Congress, disbanding the judiciary and suspending the constitution in effect, a presidential coup d'etat backed by the military. Just a few weeks earlier, Bernard Aronson, the US assistant secretary of state for inter-American af-. fairs, hailed Peru's president in testimony on Capitol Hill, claiming that "President Fujimori has proven one of the boldest, most far-reaching reformers in today's generation of Latin American leaders." A president-led coup is perhaps not what Aronson had in mind, but it is certainly the most severe and ugliest expression of Fujimori's boldness.

The coup instantaneously removed the veneer of Peruvian de The French are having fits about Euro-Disneyland. 3 '4jgfW Angry as 'Hell' in the '70s We have to stop ganging up on each other for expressing ideas. To scream at Kerry because he wasn't in lock step with the liberal line is to squelch the very independence that makes us liberals. Let's hear it for free speech! American rhythms, dumped bleached flour over them, and was galled the King of Rock. Mind you, I like "Return to Sender" and "Hound Dog." Have fun deciding whether a new postage stamp should be young Elvis or old Elvis.

Then, Good Gaaaawd! Let's go for the soul. Let's give a stamp to the man who says, "I Feel Good being a Sex Machine" even though' the rule is that a person can't be so honored while he's alive. Bring on the man who says, "I Got the Feeling" and breaks out in a "Cold Sweat" Let's hear it for the man who says, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," so tough he will not "Give it Up" or "Turn it Loose." I Fellas! Can we get some help? Ladies and gentlemen, let us reintroduce the "Hardest Working Man in Show Business," the star of the show, Jaaaaaames Brown! James Brown. The Godfather of Soul. You want a debate over stamps? JB will have you up all night.

The man had only about, oh, 110 songs that hit the soul and pop charts in the 36 years since he sang Please, Please." His 1965 rhythms are today's rap background tracks. Elvis died at 42. JB is from 58 to 64, depending on who you believe. JB has had so many it would be an insult to vote on merely and an "old" version. The 1950s James Brown, with processed hair, would hold a mike.

Background art would have him behind bars with a halo over his head. Brown, a common thief, sang gospel in jail. The early 1960s JB would do the splits or the sidewinding camel 20 years before Michael Jackson did hi backward moonwalk. Over his head would be the marquee of Harlem's Apollo Theater, where Brown cut many live records. There is the mid-to-late-'60s Brown.

That is when he became the conscience of African America, singing, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" and "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing. Open Up the Door, IU Get it Myself." This JB had an Afro and his own record label. Why, this James Brown even had his own stamps. Black and Brown Trading Stamps, to be exact I won $3 worth on a radio contest as a boy. The store cashed them in, as sure as Green.

You could have the early 70s JB. He was processing his hair again. He had some angry tunes, saying America was "Hell" and singing about "King Heroin" and "Escape-ism." But mostly, and long before Bobby McFerrin sang "Don't Worry, Be Happy," Brown called for America to "Get on the Goodfoot" He sexistly told women to wear "Hot Pants" and told men, "Fellas, things done got too far gone. We got to let the girls know what they got to do for us." Brown went from black pride to embracing President Nixon. i The 1980s JB was one who still sang in rock clubs, but with few notable records.

His wealth was gone. He beat his wife. In 1988, he went to jail for leading police on an interstate car chase and using angel dust Brown, as much as Presley did Presley ever have any pontics? special municipal authority to sell off expropriated farmlands, fronted over $1 billion in cheap loans, and even exempted Disney admissions tickets from the country's punitively high value-added tax. All in the hopes of a magnificent payoff: Disney hopes to lure 11 million visitors to Marne-la-Vallee each year. Think of all that tourist money! Why, some of the package tours even include a side trip to Paris.

To be fair, not all Frenchmen are complaining. A powerful collaborationist faction, spearheaded by neo-' con polemicist Jean-Francois argues that French culture will sinv vive even this latest indignity. Revel consoles himself with the observa-, tion that Walt Disney ripped off all. his good plots from European story-" tellers, e.g., CinderellaCharles Per-; rault, Snow WhiteBrothers so the characters are returning to their roots, as it were. The resistance movement draws heavily from the left, mainly from in-? tellectuals and trade unions, who are.

promising to disrupt the opening, ceremonies because Disney insists on enforcing a strict dress code for all of its 12,000 employees. (The French take dress very Belatedly, ecologists have discovered' an endangered hedgehog on the site. And yet the Disney' juggernaugrinds forward Wedged between the pro- and anti-Disney campsare those who profess to be ambivalent which is the French synonym for hypocritical. Most ambivalent of all is Jack Lang, the longtime Mitterrandist toadyculture minister who has re- cently been promoted to official gov ernment spokesman. It was Lang, a photo-op pol a I'Americaine, who ini veighed against US "cultural imperii alism" in the mid-'80s.

Now Lang has changed his tune 3 and recently pinned a medal on the cretinous Sylvester Stallone, ostensi- bly because Stallone named his fie-" tional hero Johnny Rambo after the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. How does Lang feel about Euro-Disney? Naturally, he is ambivalent 3 I leave the last word to a writer for the news magazine LExpress, who ended her assessment of the Disney incursion thusly: Ponty is a lasting treasure, I she said, referring to a French phi-rr losopher whom no one reads anymore. "But tomorrow, I'm going to Disneyland." Let's go, French children; theT day of glory has arrived. Alex Beam is Globe cents to every white man's dollar. Women, black and white, earn less.

So maybe, just maybe, something isn't working. Maybe, as Paul Tsongas said before he got dumped, it's time to stop fighting over that last sliver of pie on the plate and start working together to bake a bigger pie. For everybody. Listening to whiter male, resentment in a bad economy when people are scared isnot fanning the fires of hate. Quite the contrary.

It's defusing the situation. Now more than ever, blacks and whites, men and women, all minorities and majorities need to sit down and talk to each other. We must talk honestly about what works and what doesn't what hurts us and what helps us, what we need from our companies and our government Clinging to a boilerplate solution that may be creating more problems than it's solving is not going to get the job done. We have to stop ganging up on each other for expressing ideas. To scream at Kerry because he wasn't in lock step with the liberal line is to squelch the very independence that makes us liberals.

It's almost McCarthy-esque. I can hear that voice in the hearing room asking the question: "Are you now or have you ever been associated with conservative thinking?" The answer should be: "Yeah. Sometimes. It depends. Once in a while, even Republicans can come up with a good one." Open-mindedness should be the strongest plank in the liberal platform.

We should be known for vision, not for myopia, for being able to see what's wrong -not just with Them but with US. The '60s were heady days, and a lot of us don't want to let them go. We marched. We changed the world, or thought we did. Now we're middle-aged, and the battles are different Less dramatic maybe, but deeper, wider.

The goal is no longer to get across the bridge. The goal is to build bridges that will connect people with each other and connect our country with its core again. We need to do this together, not separately. Susan Trausch is a Globe columnist SUSAN TRAUSCH The thought police are at it again this time setting fire to John Kerry's speech because he dared to stray from established liberal doctrine. Bad move, John.

How many times do we have to tell you that politicians are not supposed to think, particularly if they're Democrats. Look what happened to Paul Tsongas! Sure, he's popular now because he's not running. But the minute he gets back in the race and starts thinking out loud on television about nuclear power and business again, he's dead. The thought police demand unquestioning loyalty to The Issues. Anybody who so much as wrinkles a brow over the complexities of abortion, the environment entitlement programs, or affirmative action, is verbally lynched.

I know. Some of the most vicious mail comes from liberals. My favorite was: "Dear Susan Trausch I hope you never have children because I shudder to think what you would produce." That was in response to a column that supported the Gulf War. Let's hear it for free and open debate! I understand that the thought police are driven by passion for what they see as the wrongs in society, and by compassion for the have-nots. That is a commendable foundation for a movement and I consider myself in it God knows, voting for every Democratic presidential candidate since Hubert Humphrey must count for some kind of commitment But I am just as passionate about the right of the-individual to speak his or her mind, to think critically about the most sacred of cows, and to question, question, question because questions lead to answers.

I think that's what Kerry did when he spoke at Yale last week. Questioning the efficiency of affirmative action programs does not mean a person is questioning the morality of civil rights. Affirmative action was an excellent structure for its time. It opened doors that were welded shut These doors had to open. But this is 1992.

WeVe had 25 years of quotas, and still a black man earns 77 Still full of 'Soul Power' epitomizes the idea that a degenerate fadeaway interlude need not obscure youthful contributions. For my generation, Brown, the man who danced as a child for quarters in front of his aunt's whorehouse, inspired pride, self-motivation and getting it yourself. While in jail, Brown said, "I've had a chance to sit and see a lot of things that are wrong that kind of disturb me. See, the only thing that bugs me about the country is that it hasn't grown a bit. It went backward.

"We're fighting for the same things that people fought for 25, 30 years ago. The same people are poor, the same people don't have jobs, and for the ethnic people, education is getting more shoddy. A man has to become a criminal because of survival. The easiest thing, it looks to them, is getting involved in crime. Basically, selling drugs." Is JB about to tell us all once again to use "Soul Power" to "Get Up, Get Into It and Get Involved?" James, take us to the bridge.

But this time, "Please, Please, Please," "Don't Be a Dropout" on angel dust Who knows, you may force us to consider yet another, and more wondrous version of your deserved stamp. Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.