Pubdate: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 Source: New York Times (NY) Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Author: James Bennet DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich made a rare joint appearance Thursday in Atlanta to crusade against illegal drug use, even as their parties are preparing to club each other with that issue in the congressional campaigns this fall. Before flying here to console the families and praise the firefighters who are grappling with Florida's fires, Clinton stopped in Atlanta to unveil a new advertising campaign against drugs that he said was designed to "knock America upside the head." Displaying a bipartisan front -- if a rather cool one -- before hundreds of schoolchildren in a conference center auditorium, Gingrich and Clinton described how drugs had affected them. The speaker said that the sister of one of his aides was left in a coma by a drug slipped into her drink; the president said that his brother, Roger, "nearly died from a cocaine habit." But with the congressional elections bearing down, the sense of shared purpose did not last. Immediately after Gingrich finished his remarks hailing the commercials' "bipartisan basis," an aide to Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., handed a statement to reporters in the auditorium that sharply assailed Clinton's drug policy. And after the anti-drug event, Clinton moved on to a $500,000 fund-raising lunch for Michael Coles, a Democrat who is challenging Coverdell for his Senate seat. He mocked Republicans as misrepresenting Democratic policies on the budget, guns and foreign policy. "They still milk that old cow every chance they get," Clinton said. Here in Florida, the president visited with families who lost most of their possessions to fire. Several people wept as they told Clinton their stories. Then the president spoke under a tent to several hundred firefighters and other emergency workers gathered at the Daytona International Speedway, which has served as a staging area. "I'm here," he said, "because I think it's important that every American knows that this summer, notwithstanding the great movies, the real American heroes are not up in space fighting asteroids, they're in Florida fighting fires." After driving the short distance to the speedway from the airport, Clinton and his motorcade took a stately quarter-lap on the 2.5-mile oval. The last car of the three-dozen-vehicle motorcade had barely reached the track as the first vehicle left it. As in Georgia, Clinton combined his official duties in Florida with political ones. He flew to Miami for an $800,000 dinner on behalf of congressional candidates at the home of the actor Sylvester Stallone. Presenting Clinton with the boxing gloves he wore in "Rocky," Stallone compared him to the title character, saying he "has an uphill battle but doggedly asks for one more round just to keep punching, keep punching, keep punching until finally he gets his point across." Stallone concluded: "It's been a grand evening. I shan't forget it." The president thanked Stallone for the gift and said: "I think I've established that I can take a punch. Now the time has come for me to deliver a few." The new advertising campaign, supervised by the Campaign for a Drug-Free America, is financed this year with $195 million in federal money that organizers expect to be matched by media organizations. Some commercials, tailored to different racial and age groups, have already been broadcast in test markets; the national campaign began Thursday night. In Atlanta, the president and speaker sat with several people between them, but they were careful to compliment each other's work against drugs. Both seemed to capture the children's attention with their stories. Clinton described learning from his brother that he had started drinking beer and smoking marijuana in high school. "I said, 'How often?"' he said. "He said, 'Every day.' And I thought to myself, 'What kind of family member was I?"' He told the audience: "There's somebody like my brother back at your school who is a good kid, just a little lost," adding: "You can save them." "The challenge of intellectual life is to be found in dissent against the status quo at a time when the struggle on behalf of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups seems so unfairly weighted against them." - - Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual, xvii. - ---