You’ve Got to Hand It to Him--Clinton Is Drawn to Crowds : The Democratic nominee relishes rallies, which often feel like conventions of the disaffected.

It is well after 11 on a balmy night in Salt Lake City and Bill Clinton has no business being as energetic as he is about to be. He has been campaigning for a full 17 hours, he has just landed in a city he did not expect to visit when the day began and he still has close to an hour of travel between him and his hotel, not to mention what could be a major speech ahead of him early the next morning to the National Guard’s annual convention.

But a small crowd has gathered at this out-of-the-way airport building to greet the Democratic presidential candidate, and they have started to chant, in the usual half-hopeful, half-demanding way, “Had Our Fill, We Want Bill, Had Our Fill, We Want Bill.”

Clinton hears the words, and despite a host of reasons not to, reaches in and finds the energy to literally sprint in their direction, rising to the bait of the electric yellow crowd control ropes like a trout to the fly.

The press corps groans audibly, the campaign staff perhaps represses an inward sigh. For despite what you may have read or supposed, if Clinton has a single vice he cannot control, it is this intense, unrelenting, almost religious determination to see that not a single outstretched American hand remains unshaken if he has anything to do with it.

All politicians shake hands; it’s part of the game, a way to soften the harshness of campaigning with the sweet balm of reassurance and approval. But while for most, including President Bush, it is typically a pro forma exercise, with Clinton it is very much a passion, even a need, almost as if he’s running for office just so he can shake hands and not the other way around. Like some character out of mythology, he is visibly energized by these encounters, gaining strength from this most direct demonstration that--to paraphrase Sally Field at the Oscar ceremonies a few years back--they like him, they really like him.

So in small groups here and in crowds of tens of thousands like the one that gathered in Denver a few days later, he heads with cheerful abandon for that chartless, pulsating human sea, indifferent to the potential danger symbolized by the hands of a Secret Service operative placed squarely on each hip, the way a swimming instructor would steady a child learning to float.

His own hands, usually folded demurely in front of him, seem to take on a life of their own in these moments, both supple and confident, always reaching, touching, never awkward or hesitant. “We want Bill,” they chant again. “We want Bill.”

“Don’t worry,” grouses a network television cameraman who could use a day off. “You’re going to get him.”

To travel with Clinton for most of a week is to be initially surprised not only at his gift for pressing the flesh, but also that great bunches of people want to shake his hand back. Endless press reports about the unreliability of the polls, the questions still on people’s minds and the nervousness of the electorate make it something of a shock to realize there are voters in considerable numbers who are passionately and unashamedly in his corner.

However, if what Bush supporters seem to like in their man is the fact that he is already the President, the Arkansas governor’s supporters appreciate the fact that their candidate is not. Clinton campaign rallies tend to feel like conventions of the disaffected, gatherings of people who, for a variety of reasons, feel like the federal government is screwing up priorities, neglecting their and the nation’s needs, just plain doing it wrong.

So as the last man standing, as the only opposition candidate still in the race, Clinton has become the final port of call for disgruntled voters, the by-default depository of the anger and dreams of everyone whom GOP politics has left feeling hostile and disenfranchised.

Since these people often have little in common aside from feeling fed up with the incumbents, it is not uncommon to find, as happened in Portland, Ore., people holding opposing signs standing calmly next to each other, “Save Our Ancient Timber” sharing space with “There Is More To Oregon Than Trees.”

As a result, Clinton’s standard campaign speech tends to push the same non-threatening generic buttons over and over again. “We want to redeem the promise of the American Dream,” he says as often as he can. “They’ve had 12 years, let’s try a different course. Let’s take our country back.”

To balance the all-encompassing, all-things-to-all-people nature of these rally speeches, Clinton alternates them with smaller gatherings that highlight specific issues. He sat in the shade of a spreading cedar tree in a back yard in Eugene, Ore., for instance, and listened as intently as a psychiatrist to the woes of timber industry workers, the better to demonstrate that his concern for the environment doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about jobs.

A day later he was in San Jose, gaining the endorsement of the reigning sultans of the Silicon Valley--not a few of them Republicans--and signaling an interest in technology and the future. And the day after that, he not only introduced now-peaceful Bloods and Crips from a platform in South Los Angeles as he focused on inner-city woes in the morning, he went to a glitzy $1-million-plus Hollywood fund-raiser at night. Trying to squeeze everyone into that inclusive Democratic big tent can take an awful lot of work.

Some of Clinton’s most enthusiastic responses come on college campuses like San Jose State, where he took on the aura of a favored professor, the one everyone thinks is really cool. Which seems appropriate, because one of the notable things about his entourage is the youth and enthusiasm of much of his advisory staff. Good-humored, accessible and less buttoned down than their opposite numbers, Clinton’s campaigners have the feeling of a Children’s Crusade, of Mickey and Judy putting on a show for real.

Despite their youth, or maybe because of it, Clinton’s people relish the competitive nature of the presidential race, the moves and countermoves of the elaborately planned yet totally haphazard, three-dimensional chess game that the campaign seems to be.

Fearing a sneak attack on the military draft question when Bush substituted for Vice President Dan Quayle at the National Guard convention, for instance, Clinton’s staff tore up his schedule on short notice so he could be there to respond. And when Bush chose not to say anything much on the subject, the governor’s aides insisted to reporters that their bravado had made the opposition blink.

As for the candidate who inspires all of this passion, he seems curiously self-contradictory, half the Robospeak professional politician, half the recognizable human soul. He can be wonderfully alive to the moment when he is on the speaker’s platform, responding to everything from the odd sign in the audience to the sound of truckers honking in the distance. But his speeches can come off as old-fashioned and uninspired. At home in the arcana of statistics and policy discussions, he has difficulty getting his audiences equally involved. Sincere in his desire for change, he often sounds trapped in the miasma of yesterday’s rhetoric.

Clinton up close can be loose and easy when he chooses to be, making the kind of playful light remarks that immediately relax the nervous civilians he comes in contact with. But he doesn’t choose to be that way very often, concentrating instead on appearing as the kind of serious, well-mannered younger person it’s perfectly safe for the older generation to trust their futures to.

And it is those futures that supporters at his rallies tend to think about most. They’ve been burned too often by politicians of every stripe to have high expectations, but there are expectations nevertheless. “He’s going to make a change,” a man in Denver said tentatively. “At least a little change.”

A sign at the same rally said it most simply, summing up the campaign, the candidate and his supporters in one shaky, hand-drawn word: “Hope.”