DONNA SHALALA, the secretary of health and human services, smiles when asked about partial privatization of Social Security and utters not a single unkind word. That she hasn’t trashed privatization is significant, Shalala points out, and she’s right. Her attitude mirrors what Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York found when he told White House officials of his plan to let workers use roughly one-sixth of their payroll tax for private investing. Not a peep of protest was voiced. Nor has President Clinton himself, in his public or private comments, ruled out partial privatization. “He’s been careful not to,” says a senior White House aide. In fact, Clinton seems reconciled to accepting partial privatization as part of a bipartisan Social Security reform package next year, the aide says.
I interpret all this as evidence Republicans are on the brink of pulling off the fourth major conservative victory of the Clinton years, this time bringing the free market to the largest, most stagnant federal program of all. A decade ago — heck, four or five years ago — this was unthinkable. Republicans were routinely pilloried for even talking about changes in Social Security. And as recently as the 1996 campaign, most Republicans figured Social Security was an issue to avoid at all costs. Now, their fondest dream — private investment accounts using payroll tax funds — is likely to be realized. And I suspect this will make Republicans miserable, feeling they’ve failed again.
Nothing depresses Republicans like winning, and the more conservative the Republican, the more depressed he gets. No matter how sweeping the victory, it never meets Republicans’ expectations. Why? Because they establish goals that aren’t reachable in the current political climate. Worse, any single triumph represents success for only a fraction of their agenda, and Republicans tend to obsess on the parts that haven’t been enacted. Worst of all, an alien political figure like Clinton may claim some of the credit, and actually deserve some.
Start with the first great conservative victory of the Clinton years, the defeat of the president’s health care plan. This was an epochal event, the stamping out of big-government liberalism. No longer do liberals propose programs that involve big spending, sweeping regulations, and more bureaucracy. (Okay, the tobacco bill was an exception, but it was defeated, too.) In attacking ClintonCare, Republicans managed to change public opinion about the proper role of the federal government. Yet they’ve scarcely savored this victory. On the contrary, they’ve unhappy because liberals haven’t given up but instead have turned to the back-door, incremental approach to enlarging government’s role in health care. My point is, Republicans expected more than they have the power to achieve. Their standard of success was that liberals would cease and desist, something only God can bring about.
The second conservative victory was the balanced budget. This has always been a goal of Republicans. And they even managed to exceed the goal by bringing about a balanced budget without a tax increase. Back in 1995, when Clinton was being pressured to agree to this, liberals like then-labor secretary Robert Reich and every White House aide except Don Baer and Bill Curry opposed the move. The liberals came close to persuading the president. After all, Clinton had never been an advocate of a balanced budget. He’d intervened with Congress to block a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. But Clinton buckled, on the advice of Dick Morris, and went along with Republicans. The result: an unsatisfied feeling among Republicans. They didn’t get a constitutional amendment and they have to share credit with Clinton for what they did produce.
Conservative victory number three was welfare reform. I’m still amazed at the extent of this triumph. Perhaps some folks expected that welfare as a federal entitlement would be eliminated, but I didn’t. Neither did the Clinton White House, which didn’t want to kill that or any other entitlement. The president’s domestic-policy staff spends much of its time dreaming up new entitlements, not targeting existing ones for elimination. Anyway, again with Dick Morris’s intervention, Clinton knuckled under and signed a bill that most Democrats loathed. Thus, the president got some of the credit for welfare reform. And Republicans got heartburn, all the more when Congress shaved back on welfare reform in 1997.
Now, Republicans are setting themselves up for disappointment with the fourth conservative victory of the Clinton era. As soon as Moynihan introduced his Social Security reform bill with partial privatization, Republicans and conservative reformers began raising the bar. By next winter, when the president calls in congressional leaders to concoct a bipartisan bill, Republicans may have their hearts set on full privatization or at least far greater privatization than Moynihan proposes. Chances are, they won’t achieve that. Chances are, they’ll think they came up short once again.
Republicans, and especially their followers on talk radio and in grass-roots conservative groups, ought to take a fresh look at the Clinton years. One Republican who has is Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, who’s retiring after 10 years. “History will judge this time as a success for Republicans,” he says. “It’s time for us to lighten up a bit.” And accept the fact that, aside from the multitude of scandals, the only important things that happened during the Clinton presidency were conservative victories.
Fred Barnes is executive of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
