AT THE CORE OF late-20th-century liberalism are two impulses: ratcheting government up, and defining deviancy down. The American people dealt the first of these impulses a decisive blow in the 1994 congressional election. They will have a chance to confront the second this coming November. For if 1994 was a referendum on Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan as the embodiment of big government, 1998 will be a referendum on Bill Clinton’s behavior as the embodiment of political cynicism and the abuse of office.
The 1998 election was not supposed to be about this, or about anything else in particular. For all of last year, and the first part of this, Republicans assumed that the vote would take place in a boring, peace-and-prosperity, pro- incumbent environment. Republicans had confidence in the historical pattern showing that the president’s party does badly in the sixth year of a presidency. They were committed to avoiding confrontation with the wily Clinton, who had burned them before. They took comfort in the budget deal of 1997 and a status quo budget for 1998, which would skirt controversy. And they expected to coast to a modest but satisfactory victory on November 3.
Around April Fool’s Day, however, this strategy began to fall apart. Complacency would no longer do. The conservative grass-roots were unhappy; running out the legislative clock turned out to be harder than expected; and, most important, a couple of national polls showed Democrats pulling out to a sizable lead. Serious analysts outlined ways that the Democrats might pick up the 11 seats needed to win back the House.
Suddenly, the Republicans woke up. Suddenly, they were interested in a national message on taxes, education, China, and the social issues. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about the need to mobilize the base in an off-year election, to confront rather than cooperate.
So the conventional wisdom among Republicans about the election of ’98 went from a pudding without a theme to a pudding made from a variety of standard themes. That was an improvement. But the conventional wisdom still misses the point. It fails to appreciate the significance of dynamics already underway. It does not yet see that the dominant issue of the 1998 election will be Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton alone; his perjury; his cover-up; his obstruction of justice; and, yes, his sexual misconduct.
This is a prospect that makes Republicans nervous. And it is not without risk. But the die has been cast.
Two developments have been crucial. One is the progress of Kenneth Starr’s investigation, which will produce indictments, a report to the House, or both by the end of July. This will put the issue of presidential wrongdoing in front and center. The second is the fact that, within the last few weeks, the question of president’s performance has become a partisan issue in Congress. After approximately three months of hesitation on both sides, Democrats have begun to line up behind Clinton, and Republicans behind Starr. They will not be able to turn back.
The key date may turn out to have been April 23. On that day, Henry Waxman led a phalanx of Democrats on Dan Burton’s Government Reform and Oversight Committee in blocking the chairman’s effort to immunize four campaign-finance witnesses — an effort supported by the Justice Department. This marked an escalation of the assault on Burton by his Democratic colleagues (now endorsed heartily by minority leader Dick Gephardt). On April 27, speaker Newt Gingrich decided to speak out. Ever since, the Democrats have responded in force, charging that the GOP has become obsessed with scandal and investigation.
Gingrich, in those late-April remarks, acknowledged that he was at a ” turning point.” He asserted that fundamental matters of truth-telling and lawfulness were at stake. He said that, never again, as long as he was speaker, would he make a speech without commenting on this topic. And he hoped that “every Democrat will seriously reconsider the direction this president is taking the party in. I believe that to become the party of cover- up and corruption would be a devastating blow to this country’s future, and I hope no Democrat will follow down that road.”
But there has been no reconsideration, and Democrats are far down that road. Democrats, more and more, are stepping forward to defend Clinton and to denounce Republicans as the party of scandalmongering. Republicans are rallying behind Starr and denouncing the Democrats as the party of cover-up and corruption. Each party is apprehensive about its spokesmen. Each will be tempted to temporize, even to draw back. But the parties are on a course of fundamental confrontation that must end in the defeat of the one and the triumph of the other.
Though neither party is yet willing to face up to it, the shape of the fall campaign is clear. By October, the issue of Clinton as president will be center stage, to the exclusion of almost everything else. On the stump, Republicans will ask, Do you want a Republican Congress to check and perhaps move against this criminal and contemptuous president? The Democrats, for their party, will ask, Do you want a Democratic House to put a stop to this unjustified, bitter war against a successful president, one who was elected twice and presides over a roaring economy?
That will be the issue.
Politicians, jittery as they are, may wish to reread the prophetic words of author Mark Helprin, in a Wall Street Journal piece from October 1997. For Republicans, wrote Helprin, “there can be only one visceral theme, one battle, one task” — “to address the question of William Jefferson Clinton’s fitness for office in light of the many crimes, petty and otherwise, that surround, imbue, and color his tenure. The president must be made subject to the law.”
Thanks to Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp — and, of course, Ken Starr — Helprin’s call to arms carries a new urgency. Starr’s report will reveal, in Helprin’s words, “a field of battle clearly laid down.” The lines have been drawn. What Republicans now need is the nerve to fight. They must stand for, to quote Helprin again, “the rejection of intimidation, the rejection of lies, the rejection of manipulation, the rejection of disingenuous pretense, and a revulsion for the sordid crimes and infractions the president has brought to his office.”
If they do that, they will win big in November. And their victory will be more than a rejection of Clinton. It will be a rejection of Clintonism — a rejection of defining the presidency, and our public morality, down.
William Kristol is editor and publisher of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
