(FORTUNE Magazine) – SLUMPED in the back seat of a black limo bumping through Archie Bunker's Queens, a weary Bill Clinton spoke just before the New York primary about what keeps him running despite a maelstrom of negative press: ''Lincoln has always been an inspiration to me because he overcame personal difficulties and public humiliations, because he had vision and conviction, and he was willing to be misunderstood until he could complete his life's work. He had this incredibly complex personality and very fertile mind, but he knew he had to focus people's attention and his own will on saving the Union. I basically think that's what has to happen now in revitalizing and reuniting this country.'' To even have a chance to play that role, Clinton -- a man a long way from attaining Honest Abe status in the minds of most voters -- must first secure his party's nomination. With his triple wins in early April in New York, ^ Wisconsin, and Kansas, the Arkansas governor took another giant step toward doing just that. Increasingly, the persistent speculation among some Democrats about a brokered convention appears sheer fantasy. Even if he wins a mere plurality of the remaining primary delegates, Clinton will return to New York in July only a few hundred votes short of the 2,145 needed for victory. Barring some devastating new scandal, he's sure to win enough support from the convention's 772 ''super delegates'' -- Congressmen, state officials, and other insiders -- to put him over the top. So it's not too soon to start asking, what would Bill Clinton be like as President? How would he differ in management style and on the issues from the man he must defeat in November, George Bush? The biggest difference, assuming the Congress stays Democratic, is that a newly elected Clinton would be in the best position of any President since Jimmy Carter to push through a sweeping legislative agenda. ''I want to have a team established that can hit the ground running,'' he told FORTUNE. ''I want one of those great 100 days in which Congress would adopt my health care and education policies, my energy and economic initiatives, and where the private sector would become engaged in a whole new partnership to make this country great again.'' Candidate Clinton has been specific enough about some of his policies that President Clinton could claim a mandate for change. Waving the banner of ''fairness,'' Congress would likely move quickly to cut taxes slightly on the middle class and raise them on the well-to-do: Clinton favors raising the top rate from 31% to 38.5% for couples earning more than $200,000 a year. A Clinton tax package would probably include targeted capital gains cuts for investments in small companies, some kind of investment tax credit, and new limits on the ability of corporations to deduct from taxes CEO pay that climbs into the stratosphere -- say, over $1 million a year. On spending, Clinton's broad priorities mirror the current congressional leadership's. Says Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell: ''George Bush has been able to block much of our agenda by his veto. A President Clinton would support and endorse most of it.'' He'd devote less money to defense -- some $50 billion less than Bush has proposed for the next five years -- and spend considerably more on education, worker training, infrastructure, and new subsidies for research into promising commercial technologies or alternative fuels. For families there would be national health insurance along the lines of the ''play or pay'' scheme backed by top Democrats on Capitol Hill, which would force employers either to provide coverage or pay into a government pool for the uninsured. Clinton also supports requiring employers to offer employees with new babies or sick relatives family leave. To forge a more effective ''national economic strategy'' -- he carefully avoids the phrase ''industrial policy'' -- Clinton would invite to the White House representatives of key sectors of the economy, such as computers, autos, steel, and defense, to explore ways for government and industry to work together. ''I'm not into regulation,'' he says. ''I am trying to help shape and revitalize markets. This is not a top-down, heavy-handed thing I'm talking about.'' As an example, he points to the need for a conversion plan to reduce defense spending without ''throwing all those folks in the street.'' In terms of personnel, a Clinton Administration would mark a generational shift (see box). Gone, for the most part, would be the elder statesmen who shaped U.S. policy through much of the Cold War. In their place: a bright new crowd of forty-somethings, many of them friends of Bill and Hillary -- FOBHs for short -- from places like Georgetown, Yale, the Democratic Leadership Council, and the Children's Defense Fund. A Clinton Cabinet would also include more women, blacks, and other minorities. Says this Southerner who prides himself on bridging racial divides: ''I want my Cabinet to be more reflective of the American population by race and gender than any previous Cabinet. But no token appointments.'' Sure to be a key player, though not a Cabinet member: Clinton's smart, strong-willed lawyer wife, Hillary, an important political adviser and a vocal advocate of children's rights and improving worker training. Says Clinton: ''She's extraordinarily able and would be very much involved.'' As his stamina during the campaign vividly demonstrates, the man dubbed ''Robocandidate'' by journalists (because he takes hit after hit and keeps on coming) would bring enormous energy to the White House, particularly on domestic issues, which he relishes as much as Bush does foreign policy. Clinton's style is part preacher, part good ol' boy, part political spinmeister, part policy wonk. His election would mean bye-bye to Bush's clubby approach to governing -- and to those manic rounds of golf, tennis, jogging, powerboating, and horseshoes. Clinton prefers the saxophone, bowling, and regular powwows with fellow ''propeller heads,'' staff talk for his brain trust. No one who has endured Clinton's repeated six-part retorts to policy questions doubts his ability to grasp the details of complicated issues. But Clinton would be no Carter, burning the midnight oil to read draft legislation on natural gas decontrol. ''I don't want to get into micromanaging government,'' he says. And he hasn't in Arkansas. In a Clinton White House, people would come and go, talking of quality management. Clinton's Little Rock office is filled with books on the topic, and he attends regular training sessions with cabinet officials. Says he: ''When I talk about reinventing government, I mean it, big time.'' In theory that implies instilling government agencies with a much needed desire to innovate, improve service, and do more with less. BUT DON'T EXPECT miracles. Many Arkansans found Clinton a better salesman than manager. Though two separate task forces urged sweeping reforms to clean up the state's Dickensian child welfare system, the governor did nothing until child advocates filed a suit charging the state with gross mismanagement leading to injuries and death. This February, Clinton settled the case and agreed to spend an extra $60 million over the next three years. Says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Greenberg of the Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Commercial: ''I don't think our government has been reinvented.'' As presidential pitchman, Clinton would be closer to Ronald Reagan than either Carter or Bush -- a fellow at ease in his bully pulpit. He exhibits a rare talent for making the complicated simple, but not simplistic. And even after a marathon of campaign events, he's able to make his stump speech seem heartfelt and alive. In dealing with Congress and constituency groups, Clinton would be inclusive and hands-on. A night owl, he calls legislators, staff, and advisers at all hours to listen or persuade. He never leaves a meeting without shaking every hand and grabbing every shoulder. In a Dearborn bowling alley on the eve of his decisive win in the Michigan primary, he spent more than an hour meeting, greeting, and talking job creation. (He also bowled a few strikes.) Like a Southern Hubert Humphrey, this guy exults in the people side of politics, a big asset when it comes to swaying voters and Congressmen. He's also no outsider. Unlike the last Southern governor to run for President, Clinton is widely known and liked on Capitol Hill, where he has been active and effective in promoting National Governors' Association proposals like welfare and education reform. In forming his campaign, he turned to established Democratic political hands from all corners of the party -- former aides to Carter and Walter Mondale, as well as Jesse Jackson and Mario Cuomo. For better or worse in this angry, antiestablishment year, Clinton is a first-rate establishment politician. The big question about Clinton is neither his intellect nor his insider status. It's his toughness. Getting legislation through a fractious Democratic Congress on controversial issues, from trade law reform to health care cost containment, will be no easy task even for a Democratic President. When Clinton's formidable skills as a communicator and consensus builder fail him, will he be able to crack heads like another Southern pol, Lyndon Johnson? More important, will he be able to put the national interest ahead of special interests and say no to excessive demands by labor or other key Democratic constituencies that backed his campaign? On education reform, for example, many of Clinton's good ideas -- making Head Start available to all eligible 3- and 4-year-olds, guaranteeing college loans or apprenticeship programs to all high school graduates -- are mostly carrot. To be effective they need some sticks like requiring schools to meet tougher national standards in order to receive federal aid, fostering more public and private school choice, and permitting alternative teacher certification. Worries Brookings Institution education expert John Chubb: ''Clinton is too tied in with the education unions ((which supported him vigorously in the primaries)) to rock the boat.'' Even bigger waves must roll if Clinton is to deliver on his pledge to spend tens of billions of dollars more over the next five years on productivity- enhancing ''investments'' without adding to the federal deficit. Aside from his defense cuts, he talks of saving some $25 billion through more efficient administration -- and if you believe that, the government has several hundred copies of the Grace Commission report it would like to send you. Much more, he expects, would be saved by capping soaring federal health care spending. To make ends meet, aides also talk about fully taxing Social Security benefits for the wealthy, or means-testing Medicare. But you'd be hard-pressed to hear candidate Clinton talking about the tough choices needed to achieve those savings. Quite the opposite. In South Dakota he ruled out cutting farm subsidies. In Florida he skewered Paul Tsongas for even suggesting the possibility of limiting Social Security cost-of-living increases. In Connecticut he pledged to continue production of the Seawolf submarine, and in Texas he vowed to keep funding the space station. ''I don't like to use the word 'sacrifice,' '' he told FORTUNE. ''I prefer to stress opportunity and responsibility.'' But in an era of $300 billion plus deficits, responsible fiscal policy will hurt someone. And sugar-coating this reality will only make it more difficult for Clinton to get the deficit under control if he's elected. What does his 12-year performance as governor say about a Clinton presidency? Liberal critics note that Arkansas ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in environmental protection and worker safety and is one of only two states without a civil rights law. But on the issues he has emphasized -- the economy and education -- the governor can point to some solid achievements. To attract investment and jobs, Clinton has granted businesses various environmental easements -- one reason, detractors charge, his record as a green is so brown -- and pushed through some $150 million in tax breaks since 1983. The payoff: Arkansas's economy has expanded by 29%, five percentage points faster than the nation as a whole, and more than double the growth rate of the four states in the West South-Central region. Job and income growth have also slightly outpaced the national and regional averages. The state has jumped from near last to third in the share of its budget spent on education. And the proportion of high school students going to college has climbed from 39% in 1981 to 51% today. In recognition of these gains as well as his innovative attempts to upgrade worker skills -- among them, new teacher competency tests, a state law prohibiting high school dropouts from getting a driver's license, boot camps for first-time drug offenders, and state-business partnerships to teach literacy -- his fellow governors last year voted Clinton the country's most effective state leader. AND YET, and yet. Hovering over this take-charge record of innovation are episodes that convey a different impression. Here's one. In 1985, Clinton was publicly anguished over whether to sign a costly bill providing a tax credit for contributions to higher education. The last day of the session after the clerk's office had closed, he vetoed the bill and had a staffer slip it under the clerk's locked door. After dinner, he phoned leading supporters, who persuaded him to change his mind. So he sent a state trooper back with a coat hanger to retrieve the bill, and then signed it. Predicts John Brummett, the editor of Arkansas Times magazine: ''After a honeymoon, you'll begin hearing stories from legislators that he didn't tell the whole truth and that he couldn't make up his mind.''

What about Clinton in a crisis? Arkansas offers few clues. But this year's unusually turbulent campaign provides two answers. Confronted by a media onslaught questioning his personal integrity -- the Gennifer Flowers affair, the draft-dodging charges, the marijuana episode -- Clinton has too often responded with intellectual calisthenics and moral pettifoggery, a disturbing pattern epitomized for many by his absurd ''but I didn't inhale'' defense. Yet the emotional steel he has displayed, despite this battering, in soldiering on -- and doing so with surprising grace and humor -- is impressive, even admirable. Clinton's basic message is that it is time to replace the antigovernment, laissez faire mantra of the Reagan-Bush years with a new gospel of government activism and ''reciprocal responsibility.'' His simple explanation of this crucial last notion: ''No more something for nothing.'' Business would get tax breaks, but CEOs must stop overpaying themselves; welfare recipients would get training, but only if they work. That's a trade-off that many swing voters, mad at George Bush but still skeptical of a return to old-fashioned Democratic liberalism, could well find appealing. Does Clinton have the necessary conviction and will to deliver on it? That's the real character question.