"Ah picked up mah twang in 1960," he says, tracing it to a summer at Northwestern University, where he roomed with Kentuckian David Hawpe, now editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. "Ah'm married to a woman from Birmingham, Alabama," he adds, referring to his wife, Ginger, "but she doesn't have a Southern accent."

But some would suggest a different explanation for From's -- pronounced "frahm's" -- strange and mysterious mode of speech, which occasionally recalls former Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge, jaw chock-full of tobacco juice. It's all those Dixie centrists he's been consorting with during his seven years at the helm of the Democratic Leadership Council.

"You get the credit, Al - you deserve it," Mississippi Secretary of State Dick Molpus told him last week at the Democratic convention, where From strutted the throngs at Madison Square Garden like a rotund paterfamilias, accepting handshakes, hugs and kisses from members of his flock.

As he contemplated the distance he and his tribe have come - from a renegade band of moderates athwart the Democratic Party's liberal orthodoxy to the triumphant ringleaders of a not-so-silent coup - he became increasingly mush-mouthed, and positively gooey-eyed.

"Wonderful, wonderful," From kept murmuring over the cheers, as he looked out onto a convention floor teeming with signs for two of his charter members, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. "To see it all blossom into this incredible scene is somethin' else."

The ascension of Clinton - the Arkansas governor who chaired the DLC, as it's known, until he launched his run for the White House - represents a stunning victory for From and company, who've been waging ideological war since 1985, a response to former vice president Walter Mondale's loss of 49 states to Ronald Reagan. They've tried to drag the Democratic Party from traditional liberal doctrines that, they argue, have resulted in five crushing defeats in the past six presidential elections.

Clinton's selection of Gore, the junior senator from Tennessee and another ardent DLCer, was more cause for celebration. Ditto the party's embrace of a platform that closely resembles the DLC's "New Choice" agenda, a muscular document (as they would have it) that emphasizes opportunity over entitlements, personal responsibility over government supervision, national service over federal giveaways, work over welfare, crime-fighting over "root causes," and aggressive internationalism - including the judicious kicking of butt - over timid isolationism.

But for Al From, this election is not about ideology in the usual, outmoded sense. From wants to escape the liberal-conservative tug of war, which the Democrats inevitably lose, and replace it with a brave new world of "information-age politics," "reciprocal obligation," "innovative non-bureaucratic approaches to governing," and a blizzard of equally ineffable buzz-phrases with which to bewilder GOP strategists.

To make the package irresistible to the millions of white middle-class suburbanites who, in an earlier age, were dubbed "The Silent Majority" (and have voted overwhelmingly Republican since the presidential election of 1968), the DLC wraps it prettily in "mainstream values" - yet another feature that has aroused suspicion, and charges of "Republican me-tooism," among members of the party's liberal wing.

"I think that some people looked at us initially and felt threatened," says Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, the DLC's chairman since Clinton's departure (Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Charles Robb of Virginia have also held the post). Breaux points out that rather than ersatz Republicanism, the group favors cuts in the defense budget, a progressive tax system, abortion rights, strict adherence to civil rights laws and other Democratic verities.

"We always perceived ourselves not as a threat," Breaux says, "but as an active participant in advocating change - not against traditional Democratic values, and not as a group of Southern white boys."

On the night Clinton accepted the nomination ("in the name of hard-working Americans who make up our forgotten middle class"), From was standing in the midst of the Ohio delegation with a copy of the speech - presented to him, he boasted, that very afternoon by Hillary - and gleefully pointing to the words "new choice" in the midst of the text.

"That's from me," he said with due modesty, doing nothing to dispel his reputation as a man abrasive and egotistical enough to start a revolution. Outfitted in a style best described as Very Important Nerd, he sported the full complement of convention credentials, a beeper on his belt and cellular phone in his pocket as well as a lapel button identifying him as an "FOB" - "Friend of Bill." From was staying in Manhattan ("with the governor," as his press aide put it) at the Inter-Continental Hotel, one flight down from Clinton's corner suite - indeed, he suggested, directly underneath.

As opposed to lording over.

"This hasn't been an effort to take over the party," From demurs about the DLC, whose staff of 20, including five who work for its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, occupies one floor of a bank on Capitol Hill. "We don't care about the party apparatus. What we care about is what this party says, and what its candidates stand for."

The group's $2.5 million annual budget comes largely from corporate lobbyists and the financial community, who appreciate the DLC's pragmatic approach of "Democratic capitalism," while its 3,000-strong membership includes about 750 elected officials nationwide, with 32 U.S. senators and 142 current and former House members, and chapters in 28 states in every region of the country.

"We are more akin to the conservative movement in the Republican Party after the 1964 Goldwater defeat," From says. "They put a lot of effort into developing ideas and changing the nature of the political debate."

From calls his three-year-old think tank, which Clinton has tapped both for people and ideas (Bruce Reed, Gore's former speechwriter and Clinton's current issues czar, was the institute's policy director), "our counterpart to the Heritage Foundation" - which, lest anyone forget, was the intellectual engine room of the good ship Reagan.

"What we've done in the Democratic Party," explains institute Vice President Rob Shapiro, a Clinton economic adviser, "is an intellectual leveraged buyout." The DLC, presumably, is acting as arbitrageur, selling off unprofitable mind-sets to produce a lean and efficient philosophy for the "New Democrat," as DLCers call their slick bimonthly magazine.

"I'm stunned by the suddenness with which the party seems to have embraced what only yesterday seemed heretical and offensive to many," says institute President Will Marshall, whom From jokingly refers to as "the party ideologist," the Democrats' answer to the Soviets' Mikhail Suslov. "Having been used to being in a sort of a defensive crouch, I'm not sure now how to take all the accolades we've been receiving," Marshall continues, but hastens to add, "I don't know if I like the Suslov analogy. Suslov is a dead purveyor of a dead ideology."

But even today, with the party seemingly primed to take back the White House on the strength of DLC ideas and a DLC ticket, the accolades are far from universal. Among the group's chief antagonists have been two-time presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, who in years past has mocked it as the "Democratic Leisure Class," and Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, a proud and ornery liberal who founded the Coalition for Democratic Values in 1990 as an ideological counterweight to the DLC.

"The two senators from Arkansas {Dale Bumpers and David Pryor} are always saying, `Bill Clinton is more liberal than you think, Howard,' " says Metzenbaum, who concedes that his own group operates on a shoestring compared with the DLC. "This is not a rationalization to make myself feel comfortable. I'm too old and outspoken for that."

But when it comes to From, Metzenbaum bristles that "he doesn't know {expletive} from Shinola," punctuating his ire by spelling the four-letter word.

Jackson, too, has made his peace with the ticket, though he argues that the DLC is misguided in its emphasis on white voters - a group he still calls "the minority" in the party's political base. He also discounts the DLC's influence.

"Look at the platform," he says. "It's essentially progressive."

At the DLC's 1990 conference in New Orleans - a year after he and Robb engaged in a heated debate over the party's direction - Jackson delivered a speech titled "Delighted to be United," congratulating the group for, he claimed, adopting many of the policies of his Rainbow Coalition and reaching out to what he called his "new mainstream." The speech seemed calculated to set teeth on edge - "bizarre" and "foolish" was From's verdict - and Jackson wasn't invited back for the 1991 conference. From happily advertised the omission to anyone who'd listen.

"The tension," Jackson says, "comes from the fact that while the party's message has moved to what I call `the moral center,' they're using tactics that `push off' - push off from the mayors, push off from labor and push off from the Rainbow. I hope that strategy will change."

So why is Al From smiling?

"Maybe because," Jackson says with a chuckle, "he's delighted to be united."

From started the DLC, having been tapped to be executive director by Nunn, Robb and others, after years of toiling dutifully in party vineyards: a tour in the Deep South for Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, a stint as an inflation adviser in Jimmy Carter's White House, and a variety of staff jobs on Capitol Hill, ending with the executive directorship of the House Democratic Caucus. In 1984, he cast his lot with presidential candidate Gary Hart, whose "new ideas" were a precursor to the DLC's "new choices," and bitterly attacked the 1984 Democratic convention as "the last hurrah of the Mondale wing of the party."

"He was bright, committed, serious," Hart says, "and frustrated, as all of us were, and trying to break out of the false dichotomy created by the conservative Republicans" - namely, the rift between the right and the left, instead of the "true" dichotomy between the past and the future.

Mondale's humiliation set things in motion, inspiring a frenzy of soul-searching among a new generation of Democratic activists. They were political operatives such as From and Marshall; elected officials such as Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, and Sen. Lawton Chiles of Florida; and political thinkers such as Elaine Kamarck, now a fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and William Galston, who had been Mondale's issues director and is now a professor at the University of Maryland.

"I will never forget what it was like to emerge blinking into the cold November sun in Washington, D.C., after the Mondale campaign returned in defeat from Minnesota," Galston recalls. "I think we were collectively shattered. ... It was a classic moment of existential dread" - and, Galston adds, "the end of a political era for the Democratic Party. I wanted to get to the bottom of that, as best I could."

At From's instigation in 1989, after yet another debacle, Galston and Kamarck wrote a paper titled "The Politics of Evasion," drawing on census data, exit polls "and everything we could get our hands on," Galston says, to argue that the Democrats would never win a presidential election, no matter how high the turnout among blacks and other reliable supporters, unless they radically changed their message to lure back the white middle class. Aiming to attract a biracial coalition containing at least 45 percent of the white vote, the DLC and its think tank have spun out reams of policy papers on everything from defense to education to families to the economy.

"What we tried to do," From says, "was to say that this party has to understand that if we're going to win, we have to unite our core constituency - those who are aspiring to get into the middle class, and those who are struggling to stay there."

It all came together in a single moment last week, when Clinton took up the gauntlet "in the name of all the people who do the work, pay the taxes, raise the kids and play by the rules" - in other words, the folks who voted for George Bush last time, but may not again.

"The Democrats used to give these people the idea that `we don't like you,' " says political consultant Paul Begala, who helped Clinton write his speech. "The old ways have failed, and Democrats can't keep blaming their losses on the voters."

"Clinton is going to win," From vowed last week, shouting to be heard over the cheers in the Garden. "The American people have decided overwhelmingly that the country is going in the wrong direction, and George Bush won't reverse it. So I believe that we're going to have a new president."

As for the DLC, "I think we will be for the Clinton administration what the Heritage Foundation was for the Reagan administration," From said. "An idea factory to help Bill come up with new approaches."

Bill's good buddy, Al, was still talkin' with that twang.

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.