PESIDENT CLINTON’S TACTICAL cleverness knows no bounds. He fiummoxed Republicans by saying he would agree to sign a bill letting states bar gay marriage. He devilishly upstaged Bob Dole, his GOP rival, by seeming to endorse a conservative welfare reform plan in Wisconsin authored by Republican governor Tommy Thompson. And he surprised even many of his supporters by echoing Republican attacks on a liberal federal judge he had appointed.
But there’s trouble ahead for the president. By overindulging in ideological positioning and tactical maneuvering, Clinton is creating serious problems for himself that he and his senior advisers seem blissfully unaware of. Indeed, if anyone at the White House is worried about Clinton’s emergence as a me-too president, that aide has kept quiet about it.
The biggest problem for Clinton is strategic. He has deftly checkmated Republicans on issue after issue, all the while leaving himself with no distinct agenda. There are GOP issues he’s come to agree with, and then there are GOP issues he’s bent on blocking. And that’s the whole of it: Missing in action are any signature issues of Clinton’s. As a result, his campaign consists of embracing some Republican proposals and defending the status quo against others.
This is hardly a compelling platform for a president who came to Washington promising to modernize the economy, transform the bureaucracy, overhaul the health care system, and make life better for practically every American. Once an activist, now he’s reactive and defensive, with no ideas of his own. He’s allowed himself to be defined by the GOP agenda.
Yes, it might work. Maybe running a totally tactical campaign is the shrewdest approach for a liberal president seeking reelection in a conservative era. But it’s also risky. It relies on the assumption that the electorate doesn’t relish strong presidential leadership but instead seeks a sensitive gatekeeper who will cultivate good Republican ideas and weed out bad ones.
By running with no agenda of his own, with no ideological heft to prop up his candidacy and excite the Democratic base, Clinton has bet everything on his ability to come off as personally more attractive than Dole, True, Clinton has turned himself into an effective ceremonial president who handles state visits and funerals with skill. But this won’t mean much if he’s badly tarnished as Whitewater prosecutions continue. And should the economy sour, Clinton will not only lose his biggest plus in the campaign, he’ll have no fresh agenda to take up the slack.
Clinton has another big problem as a me-too president: credibility. He’s aggressively sought to co-opt conservative wedge issues such as religion, crime, and gays. “The president has on all those issues taken fairly moderate positions that reflect American political culture,” insists press secretary Mike McCurry. “He’s not going to let Republicans push him out of that mainstream.”
But does anyone really think Clinton is keen on promoting prayer in public schools? I don’t think so. Yet the president delivered a speech on the subject last September, promising administrative measures to remove obstacles to silent prayer and teaching about religion.
And what about the president’s decision to join the chorus of Republican critics of federal judge Harold Baer, Jr., who had tossed out the arrest of drug defendants caught with 80 pounds of heroin and cocaine? Though Clinton had appointed Baer, the White House suggested the president might even ask for his resignation. Clinton argued it is perfectly “proper for . . . the president personally to say if he disagrees with a judge’s opinion.” Proper perhaps, but hardly sincere.
In all Clinton’s lurches to the right, the presence of shameless political calculation is palpable. On same-sex marriage, the White House consulted for weeks with gay and lesbian groups before announcing the president would sign a Republican bill permitting states to bar such marriages. Had the homosexual groups vowed to abandon Clinton en masse, it’s likely he wouldn’t have declared his support for the bill. He’d just have stuck with voicing his opposition to gay marriage.
On welfare reform, Clinton was so eager to trump Dole’s proposal — before Dole had even proposed it — that he endorsed the Wisconsin plan without having carefully examined it. This was clear from remarks by Harold Ickes, the deputy White House chief of staff. “All of us have only a rudimentary understanding of what this plan is,” Ickes said. “I don’t know if we have problems or not.” According to McCurry, Ickes was merely preserving the administration’s leverage in negotiating over details of the Wisconsin plan.
What also undermines Clinton’s credibility is the sheer number of issues on which he’s shifted rightward. I’ve counted at least 15 since Republicans captured Congress in the 1994 election. They range from a seven-year balanced budget to a tax cut for families to a $ 5,000 adoption tax credit to Megan’s Law (informing folks of a child molester in the neighborhood). And I’m not counting the nomination of Alan Greenspan for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, an appointment Clinton probably wouldn’t have made absent GOP control of Congress and his own desire for reelection.
One White House explanation of Clinton’s migration is that Dole made it possible. By courting the GOP Right during the Republican presidential primaries, contends McCurry, Dole left the middle open to Clinton. “The aperture widened on the president’s lens,” the press secretary says. And now ” he’s occupying a larger piece of ground.”
Fine, but Clinton is still prickly and defensive about grabbing GOP issues. When asked about this at a press conference on May 23, he disputed the notion that he was doing it, then delivered a filibuster of explanations, clarifications, and excuses. The Republican bill to roll back the 1993 gas tax? He’d only agreed to back it as part of a deal to boost the minimum wage, Clinton said. The Helms-Burton bill to toughen sanctions against Cuba? “The defense of freedom in Cuba is not a Republican issue,” the president argued.
On welfare reform, Clinton made a bolder claim. Though he’d taken the Wisconsin plan as his own, he said Republicans are really quietly heading his way on the issue. “If you look beneath the rhetoric, the Republicans are moving toward the position I have advocated all along, and I’m encouraged by that.” In truth, Republicans drafted a welfare reform bill in May along lines favored by a bipartisan group of governors and, at least in principle, by Clinton. But after a May 29 visit to the White House, Democratic governors repudiated the bill.
All of this opens Clinton to a GOP counter-attack on grounds of trust. Sure, he’s moved to the center, but he’ll say anything to get reelected, Republicans will charge. And they’ll predict that in his second term, freed of the pressure of reelection, he’ll move back to the left. The more he overreaches in coopting Republican positions now, the more credible is the Republican charge that he’ll swing back again after election day. Can a me- too candidate be a trustworthy president?
Regardless of the risks, a me-too campaign by Clinton was inevitable, says Paul Greenberg, editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and author of No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton Watching. He’s devised 10 “Clinton rules” that have enabled Clinton to succeed in politics. Number 6 is “Agree with everybody.” Number 7 says, “When necessary, change opinions, personas, political ideologies, even names.” Number 10 is most relevant of all: “Win. If necessary, use the opponents’ positions.” It worked in Arkansas. This time, though, it may not.
by Fred Barnes
