President makes three-day, $4.2 million political derby

LOS ANGELES - President Clinton probably wishes he got paid by the word. Just one of the 10 political talks he gave in recent days would have brought him a little over $181 per bon mot.

Not bad for a 20-minute, 2,761-word nightcap speech to an affectionate crowd that brought in an estimated $500,000 for Democrats - and he got to listen to Lionel Ritchie sing.

Clinton wound up a West Coast fund-raising circuit unusual for its vigor and its unabashed employment of the president as his party's most successful and tireless rainmaker and headed back to the White House Saturday evening.

In three days and three cities, Clinton talked for his supper 10 times to raise an estimated $4.2 million for Democratic candidates and the party's national convention.

Supper was beef filet for a select group of 50 at that Democratic National Committee dinner with Ritchie on Friday night, and rack of lamb for 60 in San Diego the night before. Donors paid $5,000 and $10,000 apiece.

Clinton gave some version of his standard political pep talk at each stop - praising Vice President Al Gore as effective and visionary and claiming that Republicans are promising far more than they can responsibly deliver in this fall's presidential election.

''You need to tell people when you leave here, I'm glad I went there yesterday, because I understand clearly now that this is a really important election,'' Clinton said at a brunch reception Saturday to benefit Sen. Dianne Feinstein's re-election campaign. ''I understand clearly that there are real differences with real consequences.''

Maybe the speech was a little dog-eared by Version X on Saturday afternoon, or maybe Clinton was as hot and fidgety as the crowd at the Feinstein party, but he cut the last speech short.

Earlier Saturday, he raised $1.5 million at an exclusive gathering at the home of Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican.

About 150 people paid at least $25,000 a couple to attend a ''breakfast'' that included six kinds of appetizers and wild berry sorbet for dessert. The money goes to help underwrite the nominating convention that Democrats will hold in Los Angeles in August.

The convention to formally name Gore as the party's presidential candidate was the focus of much of Clinton's day-and-a-half in Los Angeles. Besides six fund-raising speeches, Clinton also met privately with donors and supporters to try to raise extra money for the convention.

The new convention chairman and Clinton's own best fund-raiser, Washington businessman Terry McAuliffe, was along on the trip. In a measure of California's importance to the 2000 presidential election, Gore's newly named campaign chief William Daley and strategist Donna Brazile showed up alongside Clinton on Friday. Gore himself was in the San Francisco area.

Clinton's tour took him from fancy hotel ballrooms in Phoenix and San Diego to the palatial, tastefully illuminated lawns of music promoter Kenneth ''Babyface'' Edmonds in Beverly Hills.

He also helped Democrats collect relatively small checks at events held in a hot, loud outdoor tent in San Diego and a hip Hollywood club called the Garden of Eden in Los Angeles.

In Washington and on the road, Clinton is an enthusiastic fund raiser, volunteering for a punishing schedule that often has him making three or four political speeches a week as the campaign season intensifies.

On road trips, Clinton often packs fund-raising events around official business. This trip featured just one official event, a visit Friday to the Olympic training facility in Chula Vista, Calif.

The Democratic National Committee reimburses the government for a portion of Clinton's travel costs when he is doing political work, under a system in place since the Reagan presidency.

Clinton has four more fund-raising appearances scheduled during the coming week in Washington.