Clinton won't make the same mistakes. But he knows that to stay competitive, the Keynesian deficit spending offered by New Deal and Great Society-era programs cannot work. Were America the unquestioned economic leader of the world, a plan to return to such programs might make at least some sense.

But the borrow and spend Reagan-Bush years have created a burgeoning deficit that constantly chips away at America's competitiveness by decreasing the pool of funds available for investment and growth. As manufacturing jobs have been lost, little has been done to restructure the economy to create new jobs in competitive industries.

In this changing world economy, we must have a new plan. Clinton, we believe, has the best one offered by the Democrats.

CLINTON'S roots are populist, and he has not forgotten about the people most disaffected by the Reagan years--people whose votes, of course, he would love to win. But even if it's just unctuous political rhetoric, Clinton's concern for these people is missing from the plan offered by Paul E. Tsongas.

While Tsongas has become the yuppie/suburb candidate (just last Saturday in South Carolina, he beat Clinton only among voters making more than $75,000), Clinton has reached out to the middle-and low-income families who suffered most under Reagan and Bush. And with his rhetoric come innovative and logical ideas.

He would hike the top tax bracket for those earning more than $200,000--those who have received huge windfalls in tax breaks during the Reagan-Bush years. With this money, he would spark a short-term jump in the economy by cutting taxes for those earning less than $70,000.

Unlike Tsongas, he would not provide more breaks for the rich with deep cuts in the capital gains tax. Tsongas "probusiness" message sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan's If we cut those nasty corporate taxes, all the friendly business execs will trickle higher wages down to their workers and start up lots of new factories.

No good. Blanket cuts in capital gains taxes raise corporate profits and executive salaries, not the GNP. Clinton would target capital gains tax cuts only for original investment, thereby encouraging firms to restructure and retrain employees for light manufacturing and technology--the areas in which the U.S. is most competitive.

To be sure, there are few other major differences between the Clinton and Tsongas visions. Both would provide tax credits for research and development, both support some version of free trade that would avoid the protectionist wars other candidates might prompt, both are committed to reducing the deficit. In addition, both are solidly pro-choice and both offer similar environmental and foreign affairs policies.

But Clinton has the advantage of having implemented many of his ideas already. Furthermore, he has offered specifics on cutting military programs (one-third of the defense budget would be cut over the next five years) while Tsongas has waffled on actual figures.

And although Tsongas' domestic economic plan would surely help business, it lacks the apprenticeship programs, loans to low-income entrepreneurs and expanded earned income tax credits that would make it easier for America's poor to attain resources lost in the last decade--or never even created.

AFTER Bill Clinton lost the governor's race in 1980 (and before coming back in '82), he told the Florida democratic convention how to win an election: "If your opponent picks up a hammer at you," he said, "you need to pick up a meat ax and cut off his arm."

As the last few weeks have shown, Clinton has incredible political resilience. In 1988 he told Dukakis to firm up his attacks on the president, but the Massachusetts governor's unwillingness to fight back cost him the election.

Now the '92 nomination has come down to Clinton and Tsongas, and Democrats across the country must realize that they have to pick the one who can beat Bush, whose dismal presidency cannot continue.

Bush has watched cities decline into poverty and violence with no national funding and leadership to help. His education proposals came late and lacked the requisite funding--ditto for his bare-bones health care "policy." He has tightened the definition of wetlands and threatened to authorize off-shore drilling. He has nominated right-wingers to the Supreme Court who will try to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer.