HERE IN WASHINGTON we mark life in weeks — good weeks, bad weeks, weeks that end in a draw — and when the Whitewater verdicts came down last Tuesday, everyone had to agree that the president was in for a bad week. Nothing could change that. A carload of Redskins cheerleaders could cruise up to the Front Portico in a bright red Cadillac convertible, honking the horn and shouting his name, and the president’s week would still be bad. Period.
What was lost amid all the hand-wringing and confetti-throwing (depending on your point of view) about the president’s bad week was this: The week before hadn’t been so great either. Actually, the week before that was a dog too. This may have been hard to notice, following as it did eight months of dazzling political acrobatics, during which the president saw his poll ratings soar and those of his enemies tank. But by late May, the president and his associates were making a series of uncharacteristic mistakes. Whether from complacency, cocksureness, or (the favorite diagnosis of Washington pundits) hubris, they suddenly appeared politically tone-deaf. With each miscalculation a trend began to emerge: an unmistakable mistake trend. The confident Clinton of the last half-year wobbled, and the earlier Clinton of right-wing lore — feckless, opportunistic, slightly flaky — looked ready to take his place.
The trend first coalesced around matters of substance, as the White House defines substance — which is to say, matters of perception. Over the past few months the president’s strategy of appropriating Republican themes was incremental and subtly executed. During his weekly radio speeches in early May he aped conservative proposals on teen pregnancy and adoption. By mid- month, however, the strategy was reduced to caricature. As Fred Barnes recounts elsewhere in this issue, Clinton devoted his May 18 radio address to embracing a radical GOP welfare reform offered by Gov. Thompson of Wisconsin- the same reform Dole was expected to boom in a campaign event three days later. Cartoonists and editorialists scoffed, but the self-parody continued through the end of May. The day after Dole called for youth curfews in high- crime areas, the president traveled to New Orleans, where he let cry with a ringing endorsement of . . . youth curfews. “Me-too-ism” has quickly become the favored Washington euphemism for the president’s platform. A few more radio addresses — on mandatory bedtime? drug-testing of school crossing guards? — and the phrase will spread to the electorate at large.
A more sensational example of presidential overreach came through one of his lawyers, Robert Bennett, who filed a Supreme Court brief suggesting that the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act of 1940 might indemnify the president against the sexual harassment suit of Paula Jones. The president, as we know, has been neither soldier nor sailor, and that fact was painfully emphasized in the ensuing outrage. Republicans, of course, pounced on Bennett’s reasoning, but so did veterans groups. “Bizarre,” said the American Legion. It “smells bad,” said the Vietnam Veterans Coalition. The VFW objected “in the strongest possible terms.” Bennett revised the brief — over the Memorial Day weekend, appropriately enough.
The Clinton reelection committee chose to celebrate Memorial Day in its own way, by airing what has become known as the “Quitter” ad. The ad opened with Bob Dole’s empty Senate office. “He told us he would lead,” said the voiceover. “Then he told us that he was quitting, giving up, leaving behind the gridlock he helped create.” The ad closed with shots of President Clinton, doing the people’s business in the lamp-lit Oval Offtce. The error was multiple: in taste as well as in timing. Surely some Democratic operative somewhere might have noted the irony (to choose the kindest word): a veteran who had a quarter of his body blown away at Anzio should not be called a ” quitter” by a political opponent who, as the phrase goes, chose not to serve. Or, if you’re going to make the accusation, wait till after Memorial Day.
Maybe these are mere lapses in tactics, the president having been let down by sloppy staff work. But the president and first lady themselves seem to be getting giddily “off message.” Since his famous comments about the Astroturf in his old pickup, and especially since the unfortunate MTV appearance a few years ago in which he discussed his underwear with an audience of teenagers, the president has seemed to make extra efforts to carry himself with presidential dignity. But by the end of May, he threatened a relapse.
At a fund-raiser in Connecticut, he mentioned the Inca mummy that was recently exhibited in Washington. “If I were a single man,” the president said, “I might ask that mummy out. That’s a good-looking mummy.” A yummy mummy. You might question the president’s taste, since the mummy did have her skull crushed during a human sacrifice. Even the Peruvians were agog. A Peruvian anthropologist, Sonia Guilln, called the president’s remarks “tacky.” Guilln had opposed removing the mummy from Peru in the first place, saying it might be “damaged” in the United States — and now we know why. Voters will have other questions. The president is 49. The mummy was 14 but died 500 years ago. Is she too young for him, or too old?
Hillary Clinton is 48, just the right age. If you doubt it, consider her strange comments to Time magazine a few days after the president’s remarks about his mummified Lolita. In response to a question about adoption, Mrs. Clinton told Time’s Walter Isaacson: “I must say we’re hoping that we have another child.” The obvious follow-up question to such an announcement, of course, is “Say wha’?” but Isaacson collected himself admirably: “So are you considering adoption?” Mrs. Clinton went on: “We continue to talk about it. . . . “Considering” may be too strong. I think ‘talking about it.’ . . . I think we’re talking about it more now. We’d obviously wait to get serious about it until after the election.”
Ah, yes: the election. Might the president now revise his famous bargain of 1992, “Vote for me and get two for the price of one”? Can we re-up for two- and-a-half?. Or a full three? (Mrs. Clinton said they might adopt an “older” child — though presumably one under the age of 14.) The first lady’s announcement made a splash and again raised the possibility, just the suggestion, the merest hint, of rank opportunism. The administration was quickly in Ickes-mode, back-pedaling at great speed. Next day the AP reported: “A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said that her interest in adoption was not new and that she and Mr. Clinton had discussed it only ‘in abstract terms.'” Mrs. Clinton is given to abstractions, as fans of her health-care plan will recall, and hence the announcement was not really an announcement, merely a recounting of private, Hegelian moments between husband and wife.
“I can give you a long list of all the places I’ve talked about it,” Mrs. Clinton told Jim Lehrer in an interview a week later, “including just three weeks ago in the Roosevelt Room, when I had a Mother’s Day event about adoption.” News reports at the time reported a slightly different version. From the Baltimore Sun of May 11: “In response to a question, [Mrs. Clinton] said that before she became pregnant with her daughter, Chelsea, she and her husband had seriously considered adoption.”
Well, these are deep and muddled waters, as waters often are with the Clintons. What had been striking about their performance over the last half- year, however, was its clarity and sure-footedness. That discipline has for the moment abandoned them. And indeed, Clinton’s political career has shown a pattern of fumbles, followed by recovery, followed by a period of overconfidence, which leads again to fumbles . . . and the pattern repeats. We are now moving from the third stage to the fourth. We can only wonder what number he’ll be at by November 5.
by Andrew Ferguson
