For Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Iowa last week became their own Field of Dreams. A shimmering summer's day was just beginning its slow fade into dusk as the eight-bus caravan pulled into Manchester for a carefully orchestrated "unscheduled" stop. The local Democrats had done their part -- a crowd of nearly 1,000 had been waiting for several hours to gambol in the limelight. Gore, fast becoming the Ed McMahon of political warm-up acts, gave his patter- perfect introduction, complete with the mawkish reminder that Clinton's father died three months before Clinton was born. Then Clinton clambered up onto the small outdoor podium for a quick rendition of his stump speech. Knowing all too well how easily this political magic can fade, he tried to inoculate himself by warning, "In the next 88 days, those Republicans will try to scare you to death. Clinton and Gore -- those young fellows -- will go hog wild, and things will be terrible. For the only way those Republicans can be elected is to scare you to death."
Afterward, Clinton worked his way down the rope line, waving, shaking, touching, posing, always smiling, his blue dress shirt damp with perspiration, the Secret Service agents clinging to his belt when he leaned far into the crowd. The faces of Manchester conveyed the Music Man message that "there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to greet you." The mood was warm and enveloping as Clinton heard each message of encouragement. "We owe it all to you." "You're doing great." "You'll be a great President."
None of this, of course, is conclusive. Friendly crowds and sunny poll numbers can be a fatal August illusion. But for now, the mood of the Clinton campaign is a kind of dazed humility at the wondrous workings of fate. Says campaign manager David Wilhelm, who originally dreamed up the notion of putting the Clinton campaign on wheels: "I'd love to be able to say that we knew it would strike this chord. It just isn't true."
, Hard to remember that at the end of the California primary in early June, the Clinton campaign was impelled forward by little more than a grim sense of inevitability. Clinton was physically drained from the gauntlet of primaries; the candidate's message of change had been pre-empted by Ross Perot; and the campaign structure in Little Rock had so many fancy titles and overlapping responsibilities that decisions had to be made by consensus -- or not at all.
Against this backdrop of drift and looming defeat, Clinton, prodded by his wife Hillary, belatedly realized that the campaign structure in Little Rock had to be revamped for the general election. It had become too much a mirror of Clinton's own personality, particularly his tendency to skirt conflict, paper over differences and thus tolerate confusion. "He's got good political instincts, but the problem is that he's so facile and adroit that people come away thinking they've heard what they want to hear," says a senior campaign adviser. Hillary does not have this problem. "She's quicker to clarify and make decisions than Bill," says Carolyn Staley, a longtime friend of the candidate's.