Page One

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – President Clinton sang along with the gospel choirs at two black Baptist churches Sunday and implored congregants to ponder what he called the stark choices of the presidential campaign and to “make sure nobody takes a pass on Nov. 7.” 

“When I hear people say this is not really a very significant election it makes me want to go head first into an empty swimming pool,” Clinton said at Alfred Street Baptist Church just outside Washington. “We really do have a big, clear, unambiguous stark choice here. We don’t have to get mad, but we need to be smart.” 

Leaving the White house shortly after dawn on a clear, crisp late-October day, Clinton issued a strong appeal for a large turnout of black voters for Vice President Al Gore in the contest with Texas Gov. George W. Bush. 

“There are differences in education policy, in health care policy, in environmental policy, in crime policy and on foreign policy, just a ton of things,” Clinton told the early morning service at Shiloh Baptist Church in the nation’s capital. “You need to show on Election Day.” 

“We still have bridges to cross,” he told worshippers. “The question is, are we going to be walking in the right direction. Are we all going to walk across, or just a few of us? 

The president’s church appearances represented his most direct and public appeal to energize black voters to go to the polls in record numbers for Gore, despite the vice president’s reluctance to campaign with Clinton and reservations about having him out on the campaign trail at all. 

Clinton met in the East Room on Friday with 150 black leaders in an attempt to spread the word that black voters — a core Democratic constituency — are vital to Gore’s chances. 

On Saturday, Clinton recorded more than 70 telephone messages to tell blacks that their votes are needed. On Monday, he participates in a 45-minute live national radio conversation with television talk-show host Queen Latifah and entertainers Sinbad and Will Smith in another attempt to address concerns that this year’s black vote will be lower than in recent elections. 

Clinton is to continue that effort in meetings with black ministers at the White House on Monday and at get-out-the vote rallies later in the week in Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif. 

There was evidence that Clinton’s message was getting across. 

At Shiloh Baptist Church, the Rev. Wallace Charles Smith told congregants in a letter that people who think there isn’t much difference between Gore and Bush are “dead wrong.” 

“Probing beneath the surface we see that their policies would take the nation in very different directions,” Smith said, citing the candidates’ positions on civil rights, education, judicial choices, and Social Security, where he said Bush’s call for partial privatization is “a considerable gamble,” 

“There are huge differences, which when it comes to policy implementation that will set the nation’s course for a long time to come,” he said. 

Clinton sat near the ministers at both services and sang along with the choirs, clapping and smiling, and needing no prompting on the verses. 

In his sermon, Smith prayed for the Clintons, whom he said have “been under a fierce onslaught of hostile forces for eight long years.” He urged God to “touch the electoral process ... and anoint the polling places” and ended by saying of Clinton, “if he could only run again.” 

Gore, who began the fall campaign by declaring himself “my own man,” has not asked for Clinton’s direct help in the campaign. Clinton did not mention Gore by name but made no secret of his preference. 

“Don’t pretend there’s no difference and it won’t have any impact on you,” Clinton said. “It’ll have a huge impact, which decision we make.”