September 7, 1992

Even as appeals for hurricane relief pour in, the Government wrestles with aid requests from natural disasters of three years ago. Page 7.

Several new economic reports demonstrate starkly the extent to which Americans' incomes have stalled, painting a depressing picture of workers struggling to crawl up a down escalator. Together they give the Democrats fresh ammunition for what they hope will be a potent weapon in the election campaign.

As relief officials scramble to organize food, workers and logistics to alleviate the suffering in Somalia, they are uncovering a disaster that many believe was allowed to spin out of control through international neglect. But now that attention has been focused on the eastern African country's devastating famine, it is proving difficult to provide the remedies needed to deal with hunger on so great a scale. Despite a stepped-up United Nations effort, an American airlift and planes from several European nations joining the International Committee of the Red Cross -- for 18 months the only major relief agency working in Somalia -- the gap between what is required in the country and what is being offered remains large.

After all the oddities and subplots of the 1992 campaign, from the boomlet for Ross Perot to the challenges of Patrick J. Buchanan and Edmund G. Brown Jr., from the street theater of the New York primary to the morality plays of the Houston convention, the final 57 days will center on a few political basics. Can President Bush, presiding over a sluggish economy and a nation that two-thirds of Americans say is "off on the wrong track," persuade a majority of the voters that things would be worse under Gov. Bill Clinton?

The day a General Motors manager stood on a stage at the Willow Run assembly plant here and told 2,000 workers the line would shut down forever by the fall of 1993, Chuck Kehrer watched as the man next to him bolted for the nearest trash can and threw up. "The two women next to me went white," said Mr. Kehrer, who 22 years ago went from high school to a job as a spot welder in the body shop. "People were crying and running out. I didn't cry. I just had an empty feeling. I felt very, very sad. I felt as if the Titanic was going down, and everyone was running for the lifeboats, and the lifeboats had holes."