No Silver Lining in the Kerry Cloud

The delirious reception Clinton got at last month’s Democratic convention makes clear that Democrats believe he was good for their party. In truth, he was even better for Republicans. In reaction to Clinton’s first two years as president, Republicans made extraordinary political gains in 1994, not only capturing both houses of Congress but also winning a majority of governorships and a plurality of state legislatures. And since 1994, Republicans have largely held onto these gains.

Clinton prompted a Republican landslide. Kerry won’t. Even a failed Kerry presidency would be unlikely to produce sweeping electoral wins for Republicans. Sure, they could take a few more governorships and add to their slim majority of state legislators. But gaining a sizable number of House seats would be all but impossible. The maximum number of seats they could win in an America evenly divided between the two parties is around 240, and Republicans already have 227. The Senate offers slightly better prospects. Republicans need anywhere from 5 to 10 new Senate seats to cut off Democratic filibusters, depending on the issue. They’d need to pick up more than 10 to stand a chance of overriding vetoes by President Kerry. To produce such gains, there would have to be a powerful backlash against President Kerry. At the moment, there are 51 Republican senators, but only 45 or so are reliably conservative votes.

The out party–the one that doesn’t control the presidency–often gains House and Senate seats and does better in state contests. What made the Clinton era so unusual, however, were the Republican victories on substantive issues. On reforming the welfare system, long a target of conservative criticism, a “Nixon goes to China” phenomenon was required, a president going against the partisan and ideological grain. Since it was a Democratic president proposing the reform, many Democrats in Congress were inclined to go along. Had it been a Republican president, they wouldn’t have. In short, only a Democratic president could have delivered conservative welfare reform–and Clinton did, with some Democratic and overwhelming Republican support.

The fact that Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it” in the 1992 campaign made it difficult for him to oppose a reform bill as president. The same was true for NAFTA. Because of strong opposition by a majority of House Democrats and organized labor, he considered abandoning NAFTA. But that would have meant reneging on a campaign promise and would have resulted in a rift with Canada and Mexico. So he stuck with the trade agreement and lobbied hard for its ratification. The key vote was in the House, where Clinton again prevailed with Republican votes.

Clinton thinks his policies alone produced a balanced budget. Hardly. Congressional Republicans were indispensable, forcing deep spending cuts in 1995 and spending restraint later. They also pressured Clinton into signing a balanced budget agreement–an act, not a constitutional amendment–in 1997. (That measure included a tax cut on capital gains and a child credit for families.) The question is whether Republicans would have insisted on sharp spending reductions with a Republican in the White House. Probably not. They certainly haven’t with George Bush as president. So we’re left with this conclusion: The best arrangement for holding down spending is a Republican Congress and a Democratic president.

If Kerry is elected president, this arrangement is likely to prevail, though there’s an outside chance the Senate will go Democratic. Kerry’s stated goal is to cut the budget deficit in half in four years and achieve a balanced budget later. Is this possible? Maybe, but don’t hold your breath. Kerry has elaborate spending plans, particularly on health care. No doubt Republicans would balk at some of the spending. But on health care, an issue on which Republicans are desperate not to be viewed negatively, they might go along with Kerry. One more factor. A roaring stock market increased tax revenues dramatically in the late 1990s and wiped out the deficit. But that was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Unlike Clinton, Kerry doesn’t have any pet projects Republicans and conservatives favor. On trade, he’s joined the Democratic–and increasingly Republican–chorus of protectionists. He’s refused to back the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), saying it should include worker and environmental standards theat Latin American countries would never accept. On Iraq, what Kerry would do is anybody’s guess. He claims to have a plan for Iraq but hasn’t said what it is. He says he’ll recruit more allies to take some of the burden in Iraq off the United States. There’s good reason to be skeptical he’ll find any.

Kerry has occasionally veered from liberal orthodoxy. He once called for ending teacher tenure and questioned the effects of affirmative action. But, as David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, “he will momentarily embrace daring ideas, but if they threaten core constituencies, he often abandons them, returning meekly to the Democratic choir.”

But the “Nixon goes to China” analogy has not been lost on Kerry. In campaign appearances recently in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, he invoked it and insinuated he will part company with trial lawyers, a key Democratic constituency. He said he’d back tort reform to aid doctors facing exorbitant malpractice insurance premiums. Indeed, he and his trial lawyer running mate, John Edwards, insist in their campaign booklet, Our Plan for America, that they would “take steps to curb the rising cost of medical malpractice insurance.”

That sounds nice, but there’s a glaring omission from the Kerry-Edwards plan: a cap on non-economic damages. And it’s the only thing that matters in limiting damages, holding down the price of malpractice insurance, and keeping doctors in business. Without a cap, the Kerry-Edwards plan is one trial lawyers can live with quite comfortably. Kerry is no Nixon. He’s no Clinton either. And there’s no silver lining.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.