FOREIGN POLICY ON NEW YORK SIDEWALKS

Strange, just as the Bill Clinton star seems to sink, he decides at long last to address the issue of foreign policy. Absent war or its imminence, foreign policy gets only passing attention in the modern, obscene presidential campaign of charge and countercharge.

When the country is in a recession, the challengers understandably hit hard on the economic issues. Presidential candidates don't go to union halls full of the unemployed and the about-to-be unemployed and tell them about their views on the Law of the Seas Treaty. But finally, Bill Clinton made it to the New York Foreign Policy Association and gave his foreign policy visionette of the world of the 21st century.

For openers, he's an internationalist; he is not an "American First." Clinton does not accept the end-of-history, Fukuyamaesque notion of the permanent triumph of enlightened liberalism and social democracy. He realizes that we have a stake in the new "democracies" as they stumble out of the old Soviet Union.

President Bush was forced by Clinton to address the same issue and, with Pat Buchanan now off of his back, was tugged into recognizing our interests in Russia. Self-interest requires a stabilized Russia. At the same time, our idealistic side is attracted to the goal of completing the overthrow of communism and assisting in creating a climate where democracy might work. I say "might."

On Israel, Clinton seems to have moved from his flat-out, previously stated view that "Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace." He now is opposed to President Bush's linkage of the West Bank settlements to the $10 billion loan guarantee. Instead he tells the New York Community Relations Council that he would not "browbeat Israel." Bluntly put, Clinton favors Yitzhak Shamir to Yitzhak Rabin, just the opposite of President Bush. On the positive side, it can be said that Clinton has moved the Democratic party out of its standard New York City Israeli policy rut: gratuitously offering to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Jerry Brown changes his foreign policy from state to state, even block to block. In Michigan, wearing the UAW jacket, he was an "America First" out-and-out protectionist. On MacNeil-Lehrer, before a nationwide audience of avid political junkies, he acknowledges that America has some interests and responsibilities beyond the Atlantic and Pacific. Yet on the streets of New York he tells the crowd he is not interested in what Bush and Clinton have to say about foreign policy, "I want to hear them tell what they are going to do about the City of New York." But again before a Jewish audience, he said that although he denounced foreign aid in Michigan, he wants to make it clear that he is for aid for Israel while he is campaigning in New York City.

Foreign policy long dormant in the president campaign springs to life in New York City where even the Mayor and City Comp~troller are expected to have a foreign policy. All of the candidates Bush, Clinton and Brown will be glad to move on to insular Pennsylvania. There they can beat up on foreign steel imports and be more at ease with the domestic political turf.