First, he wears out his White House aides as he makes every decision–even the most obscure-during last-minute, late-night skull sessions on his mammoth economic plan. Then he ad-libs his way through an hour-long address to Congress, exhibiting an almost giddy relish for the game of legislation. Then he unveils his $700 billion deficit-reduction package, an artfully balanced and numerically slippery contraption with one central message: government, if it can only discipline itself and get the largest tax increase in history, stands ready to help you and your children. Then he caps the week with a pilgrimage to Hyde Park, N.Y., family seat and burial site of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new president speaks in a school built with Depression-era federal funds and lays a red rose on the grave of the man who first convinced Americans that government was an indispensable aid to their prosperity. “It’s a new era,” says Stan Greenberg, Clinton’s polltaker.

It sure looks like one. Government never went away, of course, but Clinton thinks it’s popular-and necessary-to speak fondly of it again. A truism of politics is that voters harbor a deep distrust of the federal government, even as they continue to seek the benefits of the modern welfare state. A succession of presidents-Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush-rode that distrust to power. Each in his own way was uncomfortable about the uses of big government.

But after Carter’s ambivalence, Reagan’s antagonism and Bush’s indifference, Clinton’s pledge of “activism” seems especially vivid-and risky. He’s proposing to convince Americans, especially the middle class, that they have pocketbook reasons to renew their faith in government. If the voters see mostly tax increases and wasteful spending in the bargain, Clinton will be dismissed as just another profligate pol. But if he succeeds, he could reassemble the once powerful Democratic alliance of poor and middle-class voters-and all but ensure his re-election. There’s some early evidence that he’s on the right track. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows Clinton’s approval rating up and initial support for his plan fairly strong.

In the meantime, let no one accuse the president of lacking audacity. Around the world, state-run economies are desperately trying to harness the forces of free-market capitalism. In America, it’s now clear, Clinton is gambling that voters want an all-out, multidirectional assault on Reaganism, even as the economy shows signs of improvement. “We are in a rut,” he said in Hyde Park. “What we are doing is not working to deal with the problems we face.” America, he said, needs FDR’s style of “bold, persistent experimentation.”

Clinton’s five-year plan is bold, experimental-and also profoundly traditional. He’s proposing $168 billion in net new spending: “investments” in everything from roads and bridges to Head Start to immunization for all poor children to college loans for all young Americans who will perform national service. The unifying theme of the new programs is to reward families and work, yet there’s plenty of pork and possibilities for more bureaucracy.

To salvage the credibility of government as an instrument of uplift, Clinton knows, he must attack the deficit. He proposes to save $112 billion by accelerating the dismantling of the cold-war Pentagon, and claims he can save an additional $166 billion by cutting civilian programs and streamlining government. But most of the money to pay for Clinton’s bold, “activist” government would come from a familiar source: $305 billion in net new revenues, by NEWSWEEK estimates. Much of that would come from higher income-tax rater, on the well-to-do-though just how well-to-do was subject to dispute. Most of the rest would come from higher corporate taxes and a new, broad-based energy tax that would affect all Americans who earn more than $30,000 a year. Touring the nation to sell his plan, he even broached the possibility that he might consider a European-style national sales tax. It’s “not … now under consideration,” he said, for the practical political reason that Americans can swallow only so much “radical change” at one sitting.

Clinton’s careful calibrations paid off, at least pending closer inspection of the fine print. By a 59-33 percent margin, Americans in the NEWSWEEK Poll said that Congress should enact his plan. Clinton’s own approval rating rose modestly, to 57 percent, after a smoothly earnest speech to Congress-the best he’s ever given in a national forum. Jesse Jackson liked the plan. Most Democrats in Congress did, too even as many of them privately laid plans to change it.

The package won passable early reviews from some deficit “hawks” outside Congress, led by Ross Perot and former senators Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas. Some business leaders assented, too. They included Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Apple Computer chairman John Sculley. The two had watched the president’s speech from Washington’s most conspicuous seats of honor-the ones on either side of Hillary Rodham Clinton. On his post-speech tour, Clinton was greeted by large-and largely adoring-crowds.

Clinton’s strategy for getting his plan through Congress, carefully vetted by polling and focus groups, is not subtle. It features the salesman in chief. Clinton cruised the country and the TV channels in a series of town-hall meetings and call-in shows, including one for kids after the Saturday cartoons. The White House press corps war, deliberately bypassed. “The press only wants to write about pain,” explained media adviser Mandy Grunwald.

Another element of the strategy is boldness for boldness’s sake. Sloganeering guru James Carville came up with a new mantra for the budget crafters: “I don’t care what you do, just make sure it’s big and different.” “Big” was no problem and, Clintonians believe, “different” won’t be. They were eager to highlight the sharp contrast with the economic philosophy of the Reagan-Bush years. Their polling, they contend, shows an overwhelming disdain for the economic results of the ’80s, in which disparities in income between the richest Americans and the struggling middle class grew substantially. “These are seen as bad years for America,” says Clinton polltaker Stan Greenberg, “worse even than the Carter years of the late ’70s.”

For now, at least, the Clintonians indeed have won the war to define the past-and use it as a weapon today. The reason is Reaganomics, says analyst Kevin Phillips, a populist Republican who has become a de facto theoretician for the Clintonians. Voters, Phillips says, believe that the widening income gulf was the direct result of Reagan-Bush “trickle down” tax policies. So Clinton has the latitude to develop his own version of Us vs. Them politics, without having to keep his campaign promise to cut middle-class taxes. “He can say to the middle class: ‘You got nailed in the ’80s, but this time you’re going last, not first’.” The NEWSWEEK Poll shows the potency of the approach. By a 21 margin, Americans say that it’s more important for the rich to pay higher taxes than for the middle class to get a break.

In Congress, delay is the enemy. So Clinton plans a legislative blitzkrieg. Building as much heat as he can in the heartland, Clinton will try to pass his package in toto-with minimal horse trading. In recent years presidents needed bipartisan support to succeed. The Clintonians want to deal exclusively with the Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. They figure House passage to be easy enough; Democrats enjoy an 80-vote majority there and near-dictatorial control over the rules of debate. The Senate is dicier by far, in numbers and rules, which permit endless amendments.

There are enormous risks in Clinton’s strategy–on the Hill and in the country. For one, it’s now his job to discipline his own party, to force congressional Democrats-not famous for fiscal self-control–to accept the spending cuts he’s proposed. Those cuts, $278 billion in defense and civilian programs, affect every district and every state of every Democratic member. “Our biggest problem isn’t a public problem but a Congress problem,” said Clinton Communications Director George Stephanopoulos. Sensitive to criticism that his plan relies heavily on taxes, Clinton insisted late in the week that he would not accept new revenues unless the Congress delivered on the spending cuts. It’s a promise he may come to regret.

At first blush, most Democrats in fact seemed willing to go along with the tax increases. But conservative Democrats, in the South and the farm states of the Plains, could balk. Ironically, but appropriately, it will be up to two Southerners, putative moderates, to bring them along: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

The biggest risk, says Phillips, is that the plan will come to be seen only as the beginning, not the end, of new taxes. Having long since ditched a middle-class tax cut, and having ratcheted down his definition of a “rich” family (from $200,000 a year in income to $140,000), Clinton’s game plan could be imperiled if the trend continues-especially when he seeks substantial new revenues to pay for his upcoming health-care plan. “He has to be careful that he doesn’t come off as a guy who likes to rely on taxes,” says Phillips.

Clinton’s plan can prevail, but only if he is able to achieve the spending cuts he’s proposed. For if he wants Americans to admire government again, he can’t seem too eager to ask them to pay for it.

Do you approve of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job?

Current 1/29 57% yes 51% yes 31% no 32% no

Should Congress pass Clinton’s economic plan?

59% yes 33% no

Newsweek Poll, Feb. 18-19, 1993