On Nov. 15, 1992, Bill and Hillary Clinton hosted a fateful dinner in Little Rock for Al Gore, Tom Foley, Richard Gephardt and George Mitchell. That night, only 12 days after Clinton’s election, the congressional leaders unwittingly sealed their own doom. They warned Clinton against offending the Democratic Congress. Convinced that he needed to pass lots of bills to be seen as successful (and keep the attention off his character), Clinton bowed to the leadership’s insistence that he pursue a congressional governing strategy. But by kissing up to Congress, Clinton was kissing off the 19 percent of the electorate that had voted for Ross Perot. He was misreading the “change” mandate and maiming his presidency before it even began.
At a press conference the next day, Clinton retreated from two important campaign pledges–a line-item veto to cut spending and reduction of congressional staff by one quarter, both of which would have been important early symbols that Congress and the new president had absorbed the voters’ message. Later the president also let his promises of campaign-finance and lobbying reform languish. While these ideas were detested in Congress and belittled among brain-dead political professionals, they resonated not just on talk radio but among the tens of millions of Americans whose only exposure to Washington was the endless parade of scandals, boondoggles and back-scratching that ran on network television.
And so that November, the Democratic leadership won their quiet little battle over maintaining the status quo. This November, of course, they lost the war. The 48 percent that had voted for Clinton in 1992 stayed largely Democratic. But the 19 percent that was angry and independent–its resentment of the congressional culture still unaddressed–went largely Republican. And why not? The Democratic Congress could say that it had passed some important if unappreciated elements of the Clinton agenda. But it could not honestly tell the voters that it had done anything to clean up its act.
The story of how Clinton squandered the first two years of his presidency is now depressingly familiar. At that same Little Rock press conference, Clinton continued what was to become an excruciating waffle on gays in the military, which cost him dearly. The character stories pried up, eroding personal trust. And by placing all of his political chips on a huge, convoluted (read big government) health-care bill, he looked like just another traditional Democrat. When it lost, he looked just weak.
Hindsight now has it that Clinton should have begun with tough-minded welfare reform his first year before tackling health care. Actually, the basic strategy–solidify the Democratic base with health care in ‘98, then tack right on welfare for the ‘96 election–made sense. But Clinton never really thought it through. The strategy could work only if accompanied by radical political reform and sharp, highly publicized shrinkage of the federal government. These ideas weren’t a “distraction” from health care, as Hillary Clinton so wrongly believed. They were an essential prerequisite. for any government activism. Only then would the public believe that Washington had changed enough to be trusted not to screw up something like health care.
The Democratic Congress–and many who still work in the White House–saw political reform, reinventing government and a values agenda as peripheral and cryp-to-conservative rather than as central to a revitalized Democratic Party. Now, after last week’s earthquake, the irony is that the “New Democrats” have been frequently defeated but their ideas are finally ascendant. “This may sound Pollyannaish, but we feel liberated,” said a White House aide last week. “The greatest ball and chain were the congressional Democrats.” The question, of course, is whether it will be liberating to Bill Clinton.
The president’s 1992 agenda is now mostly dead. Of his original ideas, the only ones with any chance are middle-class tax relief and welfare reform, and credit for both must be shared with the GOP. There simply aren’t enough centrists, especially in the House, to forge compromises on major bills. That means Clinton will likely have to sign a hard-line welfare bill that is unpopular with his Democratic base. Every Clinton budget will be DOA in Congress. And playing defense–protecting his initiatives with vetoes–won’t be much fun. Even the line-item veto, which, if passed, would represent the greatest expansion of presidential power in a generation (ironic, isn’t it?), is for deleting spending items from appropriations bills. It’s about taking goodies away. And Clinton makes an unconvincing Grinch.
But the Republican Revolution does hold some distinct political advantages for the president. If the balanced-budget amendment really brings a day of reckoning (a big “if”), Clinton will be able to share his pain. Without last week’s results, the burden of budget-cutting was his alone. And the Republican plans to cut the capital-gains tax and slash the student-loan program play right into his hands. His veto messages will place him on the side of struggling middle-class students over rich Wall Street investors-exactly where he wants to be. The same is true if the new Congress lifts the assault-weapons ban. And if longtime Republican incumbents like Newt Gingrich pass term limits that–as expected–exempt themselves, he can give ’em hell.
But Harry Truman in 1948 is the wrong model for Bill Clinton. He’s not confrontational enough even to give ’em heck. Besides, this COP Congress will hardly be “do nothing.” Instead, a couple of White House aides have quietly floated another analogy–Richard Nixon after the 1970 midterm election. Faced with a hostile, overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and a high tide of liberalism, Nixon moved to the left on policy (holding his nose and signing liberal bills, imposing wage and price controls, going to China) while simultaneously moving right to tap Middle American resentments and positioning himself for 1972 as the only option for preventing a total liberal takeover. This became the most corrupt campaign in American history, but it also ended in a 49-state landslide.
Clinton can’t even hallucinate about that. The now solidly GOP South is already gone for ‘96. (He won little of it in ‘92.) As the White House plots some Nixonian surprise cabinet announcements, Clinton has far less control over his political environment. And he’s hardly inclined to order–as Nix-on did in 1970–tax audits or pictures taken of his enemies cavorting with women.
But the analogy holds in this way: the current debate in the White House over whether Clinton should be a consensus moderate or aggressive populist is pointless. It’s in his nature to be both–and neither. That shapelessness has obviously been a huge liability for Clinton; voters don’t have a handle on who he is. But in the new political world, the flexibility could be helpful, as it was for Nixon. Clinton could sign much of what the GOP Congress sends up–showing that he understands the conservative national mood–while at the same time exploiting the backlash against the predictable rightwing excesses. Despite the now inevitable Whitewater torture, GOP bigmouths like Gingrich, Jesse Helms and Al D’Amato could end up doing Clinton more good than harm. With a little luck, the president could look like the only moderate in Washington.
But to stigmatize his enemies and chart a fresh course, Clinton must do much more. First, he must change his style–much as he did after losing the governorship in 1980 and after his presidential campaign sputtered in early 1992. His communications problem stems from a basic failure to understand the theater of the presidency. Out of some stubborn and misplaced pride, he still refuses to adapt to the sound-bite culture by concocting and repeating lines and slogans that people can remember. (For instance, after settling on “Don’t go back” as a ‘94 theme, he never used it.) The result is that Clinton is effective if one hears the whole speech or press conference, but a total communications failure for the vast majority who see him only for a moment on the news, He doesn’t speak in memorable phrases, so no one hears any message at all.
More substantively, if only an old Red-baiter like Nixon could go to China, only Clinton can . . . what? Invade Cuba? No, the transforming historical surprises must come at home. Only an old “McGovernick” (Gingrich’s phrase) like Clinton can complete America’s break from the tired past by dramatically–but sensibly–reducing the role of government. This might not be what Bill Clinton had in mind when he ran for president. But it is what the people–and the historical moment–demand. And it represents the best hope of salvaging his presidency.
