August 9, 1992

SENATOR AL GORE, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, visited a motor oil recycling plant in California last week and extolled tough environmental regulations as the key to increasing the efficiency of business, spurring technological innovation and generating millions of new jobs. Three days later, Vice President Dan Quayle flew to Columbus, Ohio, and delivered a broadside against environmental regulations, declaring that many are unnecessary and that they slow the economy and cost jobs.

THUNDERING down the playing field came the eight horses, their riders as one with them in the fierceness of the charge. At the Hidden Pond Polo Center here, the newest in the state, the first chukker had begun to the cheers of some 2,000 watchers. The game, with its six periods, or chukkers, and its breathtaking confrontations, was familiar, but the atmosphere was a far cry from the upper-crust, Palm Beach image normally associated with the sport.

There were many dreams in the arena. There was Magic Johnson's dream to play again, to slip a pass to a teammate, to hear the crowd roar. There was the dream of Croatia and Lithuania to compete in the Summer Games, to show the world they exist. Even cranks like me, who have brooded about bringing hard-bitten millionaire professionals into the formerly amateur Olympics, should be able to see that the Dream Team justified the dreams. There was, however, no dream of Croatia beating the United States in basketball, certainly not in the 20th century, and who knows about the 21st?

Slowly but surely, a thought that defies years of conventional wisdom and real-life experience is taking hold in political circles: Is it possible that in 1992 it is the Democrats who are running the tougher, shrewder, closer-to-the-bone Presidential campaign? That is a notion that is hard even for some Democrats to accept, even here in Gov. Bill Clinton's tightly wound headquarters. Over the last few weeks, Clinton strategists have watched with a trace of disbelief as their Republican counterparts have stumbled, stepped on their message, accused the other side of negative campaigning, attacked and apologized and attacked once more.

CAPT. BRIAN ABALLO eased the Hayward from the Army Corps of Engineers dock at Caven Point in Jersey City for another day's work snaring rubbish and driftwood in New York Harbor. Twenty-five miles away, in Edison, N.J., a pilot for the Environmental Protection Agency, Jim Castillo, revved up a blue-and-white Huey helicopter for its final preflight check before lifting off to patrol the harbor and the South Shore of Long Island. The captain and the pilot are crucial players in the New York Harbor Floatables Management Plan, which seeks to ward off a recurrence of the beach disaster of 1988, when medical wastes, garbage and rambling driftwood washed up on the sands of Long Island beaches.