BILL CLINTON graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. The next year he ran for Congress.

Ambitious? You bet. Still just a snot-nosed Rhodes Scholar, Clinton lost that election. But only by a few points. He's been moving up ever since, as perhaps the slickest pol the Democrats have offered since JFK.

But his success is explained not just by the crass style and posturing that marks a winning politician. Clinton has considerable substance as well. His ability to address a crowd with all the down-home furor of Tom Harkin's "Bullshit!" speechifying and yet all the technocratic details of Mike Dukakis' white papers make him not just a good policy driver but a good policy maker. Clearly, Clinton would be the best president.

And, perhaps most important, he's the only one of the Democrats with a chance in hell of beating Bush.

CLINTON'S successes in Arkansas are impressive. Working with a conservative legislature and a state so poor that it provides less than one percent of federal revenues, Clinton has created a laboratory for badly needed change.

Since he first became governor in 1978, Arkansas has flourished and currently leads surrounding states in job growth and almost all states in educational improvements. The Clinton record in Arkansas reads like a K-School professor's dream:

By decreasing class sizes and setting standards for both students and teachers, Clinton has given Arkansas the highest high school graduation rate in the South.

Clinton pushed the legislature to establish annual $1000 college scholarships for all middle and lowincome students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average and stay off drugs.

Clinton has expanded and restructured vocational education in the state to include generous apprenticeship and technical training programs which have kept more non-college bound students in high school. And he has not quarantined vo-tech programs in urban areas but has kept them integrated into larger high schools.

By providing targeted investment tax credits to businesses, Clinton has overseen the second largest period of job growth in Arkansas' history. In 1991, for example, while the national average plummeted, Arkansas ranked seventh in job growth.

To help minority businesses, in 1983 Clinton issued an executive order establishing a "10 percent goal" that requires that at least 10 percent of certain state services and products be purchased from minority businesses. And he made it easier for minority businesses to bid for state contracts.

All this in a state with only one interstate, no national sports teams and a hog for its university's mascot. And all this during the Reagan years, when federal aid to states and cities was subject to draconian cuts--cuts that made it impossible for most governors to win two terms, let alone five.

Now Clinton offers this breadth of experience--far and away more than any of his rivals--to the nation. He seems to have a plan to cure everything except George Bush's sliding popularity.

WITH THE END of the Cold War and a sluggish economy, middle class Americans have turned their attention to their declining standard of living. Unfortunately, the ignored phrases from 1988 about the growing chasm between rich and poor are only now receiving a proper hearing.

For over a decade, America's poor and politically powerless have lived with Reagan-Bush policies which redirected social spending to a military buildup and which sought to retrain no one for a new world economy.