How to approach the prospect of a second Clinton administration? On the occasion of Richard Nixon’s inauguration in January 1969, the cartoonist Herblock, a Nixon-phobe of rare distinction, gave the new president a famously magnanimous graphical pat on the fanny. For years he had drawn an indelible image of Nixon with a gutter sociopath’s five o’clock shadow. But in honor of the man’s inauguration, Herblock granted his hated subject a shave. Maybe the “New Nixon” would grow in office.
From its inception, this magazine has sternly criticized the character of Bill Clinton’s politics. For novelty’s sake alone, therefore, we might almost be tempted at this juncture to favor him with our own version of Herblock’s razor. At least since the beginning of last year’s presidential campaign, his boosters have been forecasting an end to the manic, circular inconstancy of Clinton’s White House wonder years. He has finally found himself, they say. He is, at last, philosophically grounded, determined, purposeful.
Perhaps this president, too, as he retakes the oath of office, deserves an image-cleansing fresh start. Perhaps a “New Clinton” will grow in office.
Forget it. In point of fact, politicians seldom if ever truly “grow in office.” Show us one who has, and chances are we can show you a man or woman who’s gone puffed up and weightless with self-consciousness. In this respect, Bill Clinton has little room to grow in Washington these next four years. He was full-grown when he got here. Shorn of image — the one we hold of him, the one he wishes for himself, old, new . . . whatever — Clinton barely exists at all.
On January 5, the Washington Post reported that the president’s aides believed they were entering a two-week period of “vast possibility and acute peril” that would go far toward shaping “how Clinton’s second term is viewed by the nation and help determine whether he can translate a political victory into a governing strategy.” That two weeks is up. What have we got? We’ve got hints that positive economic numbers have reduced the projected federal deficit to the point where Clinton is now likely to accept a balanced-budget compromise with Congress. But we knew that already. We’ve had a series of mood-piece announcements and ceremonies, like the president’s genuinely moving award of long-overdue Medals of Honor to seven African-American G.I.s from World War II. And a weekend retreat of 80 senior administration officials, the publicly stated theme of which was “substance.” That ” substance” was, unfortunately, classified.
So, got a fix on Bill Clinton, years five through eight? No, of course not, and neither does he. He does not like the way he looks standing on his own party’s activist mountaintop, nor can he realistically climb the conservative mountain on the other side. His home is the great valley in between, and a river of photo-ops and focus groups runs through it. In the water are the same policy pebbles Clinton has been trying for months to arrange into a small-is-beautiful “agenda.” It is all deeply pointless.
Which offers his rivals in the Republican party an opportunity to make their points. Will they take it? Republicans are a rather dispirited bunch at the moment, still unsettled by last year’s legislative and presidential-campaign disappointments — and the ongoing flap over Speaker Gingrich’s “ethics.” No doubt many of them would like nothing better just now than to hibernate for a few months and repair their confidence with sleep.
But political life doesn’t work like that. So the GOP is obliged to clean the ash out of its mouth and quickly address its own unresolved questions of strategy and agenda.
Should they look for big fights to pick with Clinton-as their predecessors in the 104th Congress did, with some unfortunate results? It might come out better this time. Then again, it might not. In our view, since the president is so obviously and fundamentally unambitious where actual governance is concerned, a GOP strategy of conflict-for-conflict’s-sake would grant Clinton far greater importance than he deserves. And since the president is so fabulously unpredictable, such a course would also inevitably devolve into a game of mere tactics — the kind Clinton has already proved he can play better than any ten Republicans combined.
Rep. Cass Ballenger of North Carolina believes “Republicans made a horrible mistake last time when we tried to push through things we thought were right without having everyone understand what was going on.” He proposes an opposite tack. On this year’s opening day in the House, January 7, Ballenger’s “Working Families Flexibility Act” won the symbolic honor of being dubbed “H.R. 1,” the GOP Congress’s first piece of legislation. The bill governs “comp-time” leave for hourly workers. It is probably a good idea. It stands a fair chance of becoming law. It is also micro-politics in the Clinton-Morris mode, and hardly a means of convincing the nation that its conservative impulses are sound — or that the Republican party is best suited to satisfy those impulses.
Is there, pardon the expression, a “third way”? Haley Barbour has issued (on the Washington Post oped page, January 16) a valedictory message to the GOP as he ends his successful tenure as its chairman. Demonizing the president, Barbour suggests, would be “the wrong course.” When Clinton is willing, Republicans should “use the chance to make our ideas law — even if he tries to get the credit.” Barbour probably has a pending budget and tax- cut deal in mind here, and it’s fine by us — a moderately conservative agreement moving policies incrementally in the right direction.
But in circumstances that do not admit of principled bipartisan cooperation, Barbour continues, the GOP should forge ahead with its agenda and should certainly not abandon its arguments. Republicans “now must learn to campaign and govern in an environment that is intellectually and politically friendly to our party’s philosophy. . . . Think and act like the majority party by remaining the party of ideas. . . . Communicate not only what we’re for, but why we’re for it and how it will improve the lives of everyday Americans.”
This is pretty good advice, we think. The Republican Congress should not focus its energies on President Clinton; it should (and likely will) achieve a more than respectable scorecard of legislative achievement; and it should also concentrate on influencing the public at large. Hill Republicans should use the legislative process to advance a reasoned debate on subjects of commanding national interest. Any number of issues commend themselves as possibilities: race and gender preferences, partial-birth abortion (again), school choice, trade with China, and so on.
We have no idea which such issues might ultimately win a presidential signature. With Clinton in the White House, you really never know. But win or lose, an intelligent effort like this would clarify some real choices. It would haul the country further rightward, which is all to the good. And — very bit as welcome — Republicans might thus elevate American politics above the otherwise suffocating, syrupy tedium of “four more years.”
David Tell, for the Editors
