January 31, 1993

FOR all the X's and O's in the game plans, the Super Bowl invariably boils down to the A-B-C's of football. "The idea of football," Vince Lombardi once proclaimed, "is to knock down the players on the other team."

President Clinton's economic advisers and Democratic Congressional leaders have concluded that retirees receiving Social Security benefits and Government pensions should pay a significant part of the price of deficit reduction, officials in the White House and Congress said this week. But the advisers and the top lawmakers disagree over how they should pay: whether through limiting cost-of-living increases in benefits or by increasing taxes on benefits. President Clinton has not come down on either side, the officials said in interviews, but they added that Senate leaders had warned him that any attempt to freeze benefits would be rejected by the Senate. Political Dangers Ahead Over the years, cuts in Social Security have been thought to represent political suicide. But Administration officials and Democratic lawmakers seem to agree that they cannot exempt the elderly when asking all Americans to make equal sacrifices to reduce the budget deficit.

IN his inaugural address, President Clinton recalled Thomas Jefferson's belief "that to preserve the very foundations of our nation we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow Americans," Mr. Clinton said, "this is our time. Let us embrace it." Not everyone was in such an embracing mood last week, but few doubted any longer that the season of change was here. From Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to the radio call-in shows, the message heard across the land was: My fellow Americans, fasten your seat belts. Mr. Clinton, who was known for a rather messy but nevertheless effective style of governing in Arkansas, insisted that he was not distracted by the frenzy surrounding his decision to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. The truth be told, Clinton aides say, it was distracting everybody. It was a cacophony, though, that people probably had better get used to, for it could be the theme music for the early Clinton Administration -- a symphony inherent in its very diverse agenda and the personality traits of the boss himself.

"TWENTYSOMETHINGS" on Long Island are moving from ivy-laced dormitories to their childhood rooms. Faced with car payments, college loans and empty bank accounts, they see the obvious benefits of living at home, especially on the Island -- free rent, hot meals and a quick commuting trip to Manhattan. But after work and on weekends their situation appears less promising. For those who have lived away from Long Island for years, and for some who have stayed, social options are limited.

Last spring Josef Puehringer visited the Art Deco District and fell in love with its pastel-painted hotels, breezy cafes and bustling art galleries. This winter he tied the knot, buying an apartment in a neighborhood he wistfully compares to the Riviera. "In Monte Carlo, you couldn't get a garage for what a oceanfront studio costs here," said Mr. Puehringer, who is Austrian. "I looked at a great number of apartments from Key Largo to Fort Lauderdale, and this seemed like the best investment around."

SO jubilant were gay and lesbian Americans on election night that many actually danced in the streets, celebrating the victory of Bill Clinton and the beginning of a new era that would, at last, accept them as part of the nation's family. Last week, not even three months after that euphoric night and just days after gay celebrations at the Clinton inaugural, reality hit home. President Clinton's plan to end the ban on homosexuals in the military ran into a firestorm of protest from the military, from Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress and, most important, from the American people. Mr. Clinton was forced to retreat, putting off for at least six months an executive order to lift the ban.

WILLIAM RICE's shoe store has been in business in downtown Meriden for 32 years, the DeDominicus family's furniture store for 40, and Verdolini's Restaurant, a state landmark with its popular brick-oven pizza, for 62. A year ago all were at least surviving a bad recession. But in the last year the three businesses -- and dozens more like them -- have been devastated, their owners say, because of the city's $23 million downtown redevelopment project, which even some city leaders say has been poorly planned and could have been managed better.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE By Victoria Glendinning. Illustrated. 551 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $30.

THIS month's inaugural festivities, with their celebration, in Maya Angelou's words, of "humankind" -- "the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew/ The African, the Native American, the Sioux,/ The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek/ The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,/ The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,/ The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher" -- constituted a kind of official embrace of multiculturalism and a new politics of inclusion. The mood of political correctness, however, has already made firm inroads into popular culture. Washington boasts a store called Politically Correct that sells pro-whale, anti-meat, ban-the-bomb T-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons, as well as a local cable television show called "Politically Correct Cooking" that features interviews in the kitchen with representatives from groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The artist in question is Jim Dine. But anyone who has walked by the Credit Lyonnais Building in the last month would be excused for thinking Christo was having a show on the Avenue of the Americas. Mr. Dine's monumental sculptures, which flank the building at 52d and 53d Streets, disappeared under tarpaulins in late December. Instead of three bronze versions of the Venus de Milo, passers-by beheld giant, lumpy salamis.

THE layoff announcements come with painful regularity. Facing stiff competition and disappearing profits, corporate America has been throwing workers overboard, by the millions. Last week alone, four corporate giants announced that nearly 100,000 jobs -- most of them "good" ones, meaning full-time work with health and pension benefits -- would soon disappear. The Clinton Administration is debating measures that might slow the process. But what is really needed, nearly everyone agrees, is a wholesale reorganization of the way Americans work. The reorganization, emphasizing worker training, flexibility and initiative, is hardly new. Some American companies have been trying for years to make the transformation. But now, with the job cutbacks showing no sign of easing off, the need to change is becoming more urgent. The hope among many public policy experts and executives is that jobs will somehow be saved if companies constantly train and retrain their workers, so that even the lowliest stock clerks learn new tasks while carrying out their old ones in an entrepreneurial and hustling spirit.

It may be true that what goes up must come down, but sometimes what comes down will go up again. At the New York Yacht Club, on 44th Street west of Fifth Avenue, an ornamental wooden pergola that was part of the original turn-of-the-century design was removed several decades ago, perhaps in the 50's. Now it is returning, via a faithful reproduction of the original. "It's part of restoring the building to its original 1905 condition," said Geoff Grout, head of the club's house committee. "The pergola really represents the eyebrows on the building."