Speculating about a future presidency is hazardous: Franklin Roosevelt, who campaigned in 1932 as a moderate budget-balancer, made Walter Lippmann and the other pundits seem blind; fiscal conservative Ronald Reagan presided over endless deficits. In Clinton’s case, his youth and eagerness to learn from his own political mistakes make his capacity for growth hard to measure. And lessons from Little Rock may be misleading; for instance, Clinton would likely compensate for his mediocre record on the environment by stressing that issue, with Al Gore’s help. All the same, after 12 years as governor and a bruising presidential campaign, Clinton’s approach to governing is growing clearer. The following categories are critical to successful presidents:
Clinton knows how important this is. He repeatedly mocks Bush’s awkward reference to the “vision thing.” But his own efforts to find a coherent framework for his cornucopia of fresh policy ideas have had mixed results. Recently he began focusing on the theme of “Putting People First,” and he’s outlined a quite specific economic plan that would invest more than $50 billion annually for the next four years in order to create high-wage jobs and train the American work force for a future of global competition. Clinton wants everyone-from overpaid corporate executives to absent parents to idle welfare recipients-to exercise more responsibility. And he hopes to “reinvent” the way government works. Bruce Reed, who coordinates issues for Clinton, offers the old only-Nixon-could-go-to-China analogy: " It may take a Democrat who really believes in. government to change it. "
Will the Nixon-China analogy apply to yanking the budget out of the red? Could it be that only a Democrat, secure with the elderly, can edge the political system toward the restraints on social security, Medicare and other entitlements that are necessary for real fiscal sanity? Under questioning, Clinton has recently left the door open to entitlement reform. His plan to raise taxes on the wealthy would help make those cuts seem more fair. And controlling entitlements would free up money for his various pricey social programs, like national service. But his new economic plan avoids that hard path. It unconvincingly claims that controlling health-care costs and a few other expenses will allow the deficit to be halved without big changes in entitlements. And its emphasis on “growing” out of the deficit is positively Reaganesque. Clinton’s savings from defense cuts would go toward the core of his vision, which is long-term investment in training and infrastructure –not debt reduction. It’s a good bet that as president he’d learn to live with the deficit rather than break his pick on it.
Having struggled to free the Democratic Party from some of its stifling orthodoxy, Clinton will face the challenge that all moderates do: how to prove that his vision is grounded in conviction. When asked which issues he would never compromise on, he cites racial harmony. He has also shown a consistent willingness to fight for education. And unlike recent presidents, he probably won’t be distracted from his domestic goals by the allure of foreign policy, which is easier to control. But like other 1960s idealists worn down by the real world, many of his political principles are now quite negotiable.
It could be that Clinton has overlearned the searing lessons of his 1980 defeat for reelection as governor. When he returned to the statehouse in 1983, he was more conciliatory and more effective but less of a crusader for change. In place of his zealous challenge to entrenched interests, he chose to work with them. “Here’s what he does,” says John Brummett, an Arkansas journalist who covers Clinton. “First he gives great lip service to his proposals. Then, when the bill comes in and the legislators and lobbyists chip away at it, he says, ‘That’s OK, that’s OK.’ In the end, it’s watered down to 40 percent of what it was, and he declares victory,” As a practical matter, this operating style constitutes a vision of its own–a vision of genuine but incremental change.
There are signs this year that voters wouldn’t mind seeing more of the early Bill Clinton, circa 1979, zapping the big boys, even if that risks failure. At some level, Clinton recognizes this: he often adds a few populist chords to his message, and the boldness of some of his proposals-for instance, slashing White House and congressional staff by one quarter-suggests that he knows the electorate is not much in the mood for half-a-loaf solutions. But that rational understanding is in considerable conflict with his political nature. It’s almost as if his antenna says one thing (radical change necessary) and his engine something else (keep chugging with compromise) Oddsmakers should favor the latter.
This is the part of a president’s character that is most directly relevant to the day-to-day job. Clinton generally stacks up well here, mostly because he seems intellectually secure. " He’s not remotely threatened by smart people-in fact, he seeks them out," says former chief of staff and current campaign aide, Betsey Wright, adding what the country already knows from seeing Hillary: that he’s not insecure about strong, tough women, either. Clinton’s Rolodex of policy experts from around the country is astonishingly long, and he’d be inclined to make use of them all. Besides occasional angry flare-ups at staff, he’s easygoing-the quintessential “night person.” As president, Clinton could be expected to pad into the White House kitchen for a post-midnight snack, then make a few phone calls before staying up half the night reading.
Where Clinton is less secure is in his constant desire to make everyone like him. The danger is that in keeping everyone happy, you end up standing for nothing. Clinton reels off interests in Arkansas that he confronted (for example, the NRA) and his campaign has gone to great pains to showcase him saying mildly unpopular things to various groups (e.g. attacking Sister Souljah before the Rainbow Coalition). Still, this tension between his instinctive ingratiation and his need to show some spine will be a constant feature of any Clinton presidency.
By and large, his natural desire to mend fences would be an asset. The Arkansas teachers’ union hated him in the mid-’80s for requiring competency tests; now teachers cheer him madly. He’s so agreeable that some visitors leave his office thinking he’s on their side, only to find out later that he’s not. But even those who feel betrayed are often eventually won over again, if it’s important enough to him. In person, those persuasive powers are far more in evidence than on TV, and they are the essence of the political skill that Clinton would bring to the job. Americans dislike politicians. But the truth is, if you’re not a good politician, you can’t be a good president.
In Little Rock, Clinton roamed the halls of the Arkansas General Assembly, coffee cup in hand, buttonholing key legislators. That might look odd for a president on Capitol Hill, but Clinton would be deeply involved in advancing his own legislation. He miscast Gore last week by promising to place him in that role; in Congress, Gore has been far more effective at bringing public attention to complex issues than in actually pushing bills through. (Assigning him more of a role on foreign policy, where Clinton is knowledgeable but less experienced, would make more sense.) Most likely, Clinton would handle his own congressional liaison. He’d have none of Jimmy Carter’s awkwardness about courting members, and he’d care more about his domestic agenda than does Bush.
But might his congressional relations be too good? Might the Dan Rostenkowskis and John Dingells of the Hill eat him for lunch? In Arkansas, Clinton usually went for what he could get. " I don’t like to use the term that he was ’easy,’ but sometimes his attitude was, ‘If I can get this passed, I can improve on it next year–half a loaf is better’," recalls Knox Nelson, a powerful conservative former Arkansas state senator. The problem in Washington is that there often isn’t a next year; major bills in a particular area will not usually pass two sessions in a row. And in a Democratic administration, the White House proposal is the left base line, from which the Hill and lobbyists weaken the bill as it moves rightward. That means that to achieve the real change he seeks, Clinton would have to compromise less readily.
Clinton can be tough-the campaign proves it-but he is less willing to go for the jugular when he’s governing than when he’s politicking. And his refusal to hold a grudge-while admirable-has its disadvantages. By not threatening to withhold favors from legislators, Clinton deprives himself of a valuable weapon. " That schmoozing style can be very effective as long as you have the stick as well as the carrot," says historian Michael Beschloss, noting that those presidents who were feared on Capitol Hill-FDR, LBJ, Ronald Reagan-did best there.
Of course, hitting a legislator on the head isn’t as effective as going over his head. That really gets attention. Clinton did this in Arkansas, most memorably when he and Hillary traveled the state in 1983, lighting a fire under the legislature for school reform. But as president, Clinton’s skill in the bully pulpit-his outside game-is more in doubt. No matter how his acceptance speech comes off, he doesn’t usually communicate brilliantly with prepared TV addresses. That leaves impromptu remarks, press conferences and town meetings, where he comes across much better. Clinton is so talkative-so eager to explain himself-that it’s hard to imagine him hiding out from the press for long, even if his popularity has ebbed. The challenge for reporters will be to listen extremely carefully to every word he says. If they don’t, he’ll slip something by them.
A Clinton-Gore administration would attempt to recapture some of the idealism of the early 1960s, and to restore faith in the ability of government to address social problems. Noble goals. But who are the soldiers enlisted to make this fight? The pent-up demand on the part of Democrats-in-waiting around the country is creating a gusher of policy proposals, with resumes to follow. Already, an unaffiliated group called the Citizens Transition Project-with contributions by many from Clinton’s policy circle-is getting ready to give the next president a thousand pages of policy options (as the Heritage Foundation did for Reagan). Some of these Clinton backers are still working full time for change. And some are corporate lawyers. “You could walk into any law firm in any city and be likely to find bright young to middle-age people who would like nothing better than to give up their lives of taking dreary depositions,” says Harvard professor Robert Reich, an old friend and adviser to Clinton.
It’s clear who those people used to be, when the fires of their idealism burned bright. But who are they now, after so many years of taking those “dreary depositions” on behalf of the same clients that a Clinton administration would have to regulate? They may be Democrats when they go home at night, but many have been leading Republican lives at the office. Is a “Clinton Democrat” someone who, like Hillary, can bridge that gap without feeling like a hypocrite? In the populist analysis of what ails Washington, the parties are indistinguishable, as lawyers and lobbyists carve up the goodies for themselves. Clinton has proposed some limits on PACs and government officials who cash in on their public service. But in his vision, the edifice remains. " The barn burners and hell raisers don’t get very much accomplished," says Reich. If Clinton’s elected, the country will finally learn whether the policy wonks can do any better. ..L1.-
The Harvard professor and old Clinton friend could be powerful domestic-policy czar.
She runs Children’s Defense Fund, where Hillary serves. Future secretary of HHS?
Some handicappers have Indiana rep. and veep runner-up as Clinton’s secretary of state.
Former South Carolina gov. is possible chief of staff. Or ex-Michigan gov. James Blanchard?
Chicago public housing chief with some tough-minded ideas is a favorite for HUD secretary.
Ex-San Antonio mayor on tap for big job. Ditto ex-Arizona gov. Bruce Babbitt (Interior?).
title: “How He Would Govern” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-22” author: “Steven Oliver”
The problem for the voters is that the words “President Clinton” still sound a little peculiar. While many are now impressed with him as a candidate, the basic question remains: Can he deliver? Can the hundreds of campaign speeches and thousands of pages of position papers flowing through hush-hush transition teams actually translate into action? Months ago Clinton outlined his policy ideas in more detail than presidential candidates usually do, but even now he drops no hints about which of his ten thousand closest friends would carry those ideas forward (page 28). That makes crystal-ball gazing especially unreliable. The Arkansas governor is no longer our national blind date, but we still don’t really know how it would feel to live with him.
So we’ll have to settle for sniffing clues in Clinton’s plan, his record as governor and the particular cards he would be dealt by circumstance. The central leadership questions are: Would he be inspirational and focused? Would he be, at bottom, a tax-and-spend liberal? Would he be capable of breaking the gridlock of Washington? Would he get along with Congress? Would the change he brings be truly historic or merely incremental?
President-elect Clinton’s first task would be to transform the psychology of American political life. Clinton’s ability to summon the best in Americans-to convince them that their vote was more than just anti-Bush-would depend largely on his symbolic gestures. Beyond the town meetings he has already promised, Clinton would need to figure out how to give more inspirational prepared speeches than he has managed so far. But one thing this robo-candidate understands much better than George Bush is that politics and government are inseparable. After Election Day, he would likely just keep on stumping for his ideas. Get ready for the Permanent Clinton Campaign.
There’s rumbling that Clinton would move boldly even before being sworn in on Jan. 20. The new Congress, which is expected to have at least 120 new reform-minded members, convenes on Jan. 5. Some Democrats believe he should use this interlude of good feeling to ask for far-reaching campaign-finance reform to be rushed through before he moves into the White House. The idea, still undiscussed within the Clinton camp, would be to allow Clinton to introduce his major economic program to a Congress that was fundamentally different–freer of the special interests that wrecked legislation. The argument on the other side is that this ploy would distract from the new president’s core agenda.
The thrust of a Clinton presidency would be to focus on two or three clear themes in the first 100 days and drive them home, as Ronald Reagan did. “Getting it through is the whole game,” says George Stephanopoulos, perhaps Clinton’s closest aide. The White House congressional liaison office–a midlevel backwater under Bush-would be transformed into something resembling the Clinton campaign’s now famous “war room.” The entire administration would spend the winter and spring of 1993 pushing a legislative package with three major elements: creating jobs, reforming health care and training the work force of the future.
In the early days, every other promise would likely be subordinated to these major themes. Clinton might make quiet progress on restructuring the civil service, changing the welfare system or expanding the number of cops, but they probably wouldn’t be the focus of his energies. Certain familiar bills-family leave and stricter enforcement of child support-would pass Congress and be signed; and within his first few days in office the new president would likely use executive orders to end the “gag rule” on abortion counseling, the ban on fetal-tissue research and the Council on Competitiveness’s choke hold on environmental regulations. Foreign policy would be more integrated with international economic policy, probably leading to the establishment of an “economic security council.”
But these would all be sideshows to the Big Three of creating jobs, reforming health care and training the work force. The huge, unanswered question is whether genuine deficit reduction makes that top tier–or, like the crazy aunt Ross Perot invokes, stays muffled in the basement. As Clinton knows, the solution lies in reforming entitlement programs and many of Perot’s other fine prescriptions. While the candidate has carefully avoided closing the door on these painful choices, he has not sought a mandate for them.
During the campaign, Clinton has said that a recession is the wrong time for a major deficit-reduction plan. And he’s now promising to immediately accelerate spending billions in unused transportation funds to stimulate the economy. This may mean that the deficit will go up before it goes down. Clinton’s economic advisers are already divided between Investment Firsters (who tend to say manana on spending cuts) and Deficit Hawks (who want to dive in now). As usual, their boss might end up splitting the difference.
Clinton would likely offer members of Congress a deal: they get the goodies of an economic-stimulus package (roads, bridges, high-speed rail spread out across congressional districts selected by the administration) in exchange for pledging allegiance to the rest of Clinton’s core program on health, education and, yes, deficit reduction. In other words, short-term spending to leverage long-term cuts.
This would be part of an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China strategy. Only a Democratic president could give the Democratic Congress the political camouflage necessary to control its voracious appetite. Only a Democratic president could plunge the knife deep into entitlement programs and the bloated federal bureaucracy. Can Clinton be that Nixon? His current proposals–for instance, cutting 100,000 federal jobs through attrition–are too modest and would likely be compromised down to meaninglessness. He still doesn’t seem to fully understand the electorate’s Perotist message: Major surgery required.
But Clinton’s aides say he does recognize the need to use next year’s budget to " lay down a marker" on fiscal sanity. This would send a message to nervous financial markets that the new president is sound. The Clinton folks won’t admit it, but new tax increases (targeted first at alcohol, tobacco and other “consumption”) would probably come in 1994 or 1995-after it becomes obvious that raising rates on the rich and foreign corporations isn’t enough. Defense cuts would likely be deepened beyond the current plan, too.
This horse-trading of specific capital projects in exchange for votes to control spending or raise revenue is essentially the way Clinton did business in Arkansas. The difference is that the Arkansas constitution forces the governor to balance his budget. In Washington, Clinton may be tempted to buy the Pollyannish arguments that Reagan and Bush used about “growing” out of the deficit. But the best argument for why Clinton may turn out to be more fiscally conservative than expected is that if he ignores the deficit, it would snuff out any recovery and put him in bad shape for re-election.
Clinton’s basic governing strategy–stroking legislators while keeping his eye on the Big Picture–is one of two major lessons that he learned from his searing 1980 loss of the governorship. The second lesson was to avoid throwing down the gauntlet or getting too far ahead of public opinion. When he returned to office in 1983, his early staff of arrogant, crusading activists was gone. Instead of trying to attack a hundred problems and interest groups at once, as he did in his first term, Clinton concentrated his fire (mostly on education), struck a strongly pro-business tone and got cozy with the existing power structure.
One danger for Clinton is that he may have overlearned the second lesson–the one that made him cautious and nonconfrontational. Pulling everyone into the process can also pull it apart. Republicans might be the least of Clinton’s problems. More daunting are the pent-up demands of Democratic constituency groups (labor, minorities, government employees) who’ve gone thirsty for 12 years. Their desperation to win has kept them quiet lately. But if Clinton prevails, they won’t stay that way.
Clinton, who is basically a moderate, knows that he must finesse the demands of these liberal groups or watch his presidency be eaten alive. Although he sought and won their endorsements, he has promised them little and he would not owe his job directly to them. They carry less clout than when Jimmy Carter was president. “If the left had a bunch of programs they wanted to sell to Clinton, the money’s not there anyway,” says Bruce Reed, Clinton’s issues director, noting that the candidate has already refused to agree to $35 billion in new aid sought by the nation’s mayors. But the National Education Association, for instance, may try to block efforts to toughen standards or allow idealistic college graduates and retired military officers into teaching roles. Clinton’s record suggests that he would bring Democratic constituency groups into the White House, listen to them, then send them away thinking he’s on their side. When they find out he isn’t, or has waffled, many would feel betrayed.
An even bigger problem is the collection of thousands of small, rich special interests, each tremendously skilled at gaming the system. These “parasites” of official Washington, as Franklin Roosevelt once called them, are everywhere now. They are mostly strong industry groups with weak claims on the Treasury who hire lawyers and lobbyists to preserve their pieces of the pie.
The K Street crowd is already chummy with Clinton’s people. The cover of last week’s National Journal, a policy tip sheet for insiders, contained the headline READY TO CASH IN ON CLINTON over a picture of superlobbyist Tommy Boggs, whose law partners include Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and no fewer than 15 others who claim some connection to the Clinton campaign. These are the kinds of friends who could truly ruin a Clinton administration and betray most of the principles of the Democratic Party in the process.
Imagine what the K Street parasites could do to Clinton’s still-vague ideas on health-care reform. (Boggs’s firm represents New York Life Insurance Co. and Mutual Life Insurance Co.) Special interests have three chances to get their paws on legislation: when it’s formulated in the White House, when it’s argued on the Hill and when it’s implemented after passage-with health, in the staffing of the review boards Clinton proposes. The new president would have to be vigilant in all three areas to avoid watching his program being watered down to nothing.
The odds are that on health, anyway, he won’t be vigilant enough. “Blue Cross owns Arkansas, and he never did much to fight them,” says Max Brantley, a columnist for The Arkansas Times who has covered Clinton for years. On the other hand, Clinton knows that if he fails to get control of the health-care mess, his presidency won’t succeed. The biggest spur to action on this and other issues may be the knowledge that if, in the now famous rap on him, Clinton tries to please everyone, he would end up pleasing no one.
Clinton’s aides insist that their man can square this circle. The answer is for him to be inclusive at first, then show some spine. In the case of health, that would mean bringing in all sides (including CEOs) to hammer out the details of his plan, then going to the people and asking them to beat those elements of the “medical-industrial complex” that still oppose him. One problem is that even now, Clinton is uncomfortable running against Washington; so stigmatizing the " K Street crowd" or another bogeyman would not come easily to Mr. Consensus. Worse, the health issue is so complicated that it might not be resolved until well after the honeymoon is over, which means Clinton’s political capital might have dwindled.
That’s why speed is of the essence. Rep. Leon Panetta, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is among those who think Clinton should present his entire program in one big, fat package. “If a new president sits down early with members and says, ‘I want to get this done’–that commands a lot of loyalty, even with the toughest committee chairman. The longer you let it stall, the more members will go their own directions.”
Clinton’s record provides conflicting clues on this point. He is exceptionally good at massaging legislators; as president he would probably be the best at that since LBJ. Right after the election, Dan Rostenkowski, Lloyd Bentsen and John Dingell would be his three new best friends. But in Little Rock Clinton has also tended to study the options endlessly and be late for everything-including key legislative decisions. He has also sometimes caved in too quickly to powerful state legislators, weakening his program. To succeed, he’ll need to break those habits.
One big unanswered question is exactly what would fit within the framework of the Big Picture. For instance, Clinton’s college-loan program–in which any student can borrow the money to go to college and pay it back as a percentage of future income or through national service–is seen by some staffers as central to educating the high-skills work force for the next century. If passed, it might be the single most remembered achievement of the entire administration. But Panetta would recommend not including it at first because of the cost.
Resolving what’s in-and out-of-the package would be President-elect Clinton’s most important substantive task. If he tries too much, he would risk over loading the circuits and failing. If he tries too little, he would squander his political capital on incremental instead of fundamental change and lose everything in the long run. Henry Wallace, who was one of FDR’s vice presidents, said his boss “could keep all the balls in the air without losing his own. " That would be the challenge facing a President Clinton. Even he doesn’t know for sure whether he can meet it.
