In his 18 years in the Senate, Bill Bradley built a reputation as the rare Democrat who is committed to cutting taxes. He even wrote a book about it. Similarly, Vice President Al Gore has positioned himself as a moderate since the day he was elected to Congress in 1976. Far more than President Clinton, says former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, Gore really believes the “mantra” of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
Yet when Bradley and Gore met in their first presidential campaign debate on October 27, they sounded like Mario Cuomo and Walter Mondale, old-fashioned liberals eager to increase the federal government’s role in American life. David Broder, the sober-minded political columnist for the Washington Post, was amazed: “Any listener would have to think that either of these men would be a more liberal president than Bill Clinton.”
The chief topic of the debate was how to handle the non-Social Security surplus, projected to exceed $ 1 trillion over the next decade. Gore went on the attack. Bradley, he huffed, would spend the entire surplus on a new health care plan for uninsured kids and their parents. That would leave to funds for expanding Medicare, which Gore is anxious to do. Return any portion of the surplus to Americans by cutting taxes? The thought never crossed Gore’s mind. Nor Bradley’s.
There’s a simple explanation for Bradley and Gore’s lurch to the left. The presidential caucuses and primaries are dominated by the Democratic party’s liberal wing of union members, minorities, feminists, and unreconstructed leftists, and these candidates are merely going where the votes are. That explanation, however, is inadequate. True, Bradley and Gore are pandering, but more important, they are part of a broader shift to the left among leading Democrats. It’s not quite a liberal counter-revolution. Public opinion, still fairly conservative, wouldn’t allow that. But in both rhetoric and policy proposals, it’s a rejection of the moderate — or New Democrat, or Third Way — model that Clinton has embodied. Not quite a total rejection, but significant nonetheless.
Gore and Clinton still pledge allegiance to Democratic centrism. At the DLC’s October 13 gala, Clinton boasted of “an enormous modernization of the thinking and direction of the Democratic party.” But Clinton himself is now retreating from exactly that project. New Democrats prefer market-based solutions, especially to cope with the soaring costs of Social Security and Medicare. In his plan for making Social Security solvent, unveiled at the beginning of this year, Clinton included one of those solutions, the investment of unspent Social Security trust funds in stocks and bonds. But before submitting his formal proposal to Congress last month, Clinton made one major alteration, jettisoning the investment proposal.
Rather than tame Medicare, Clinton wants to expand it by adding a generous benefit for prescription drugs. So does Gore. And they will settle for nothing less. Last winter, a commission headed by Democratic Senator John Breaux and Republican Representative Bill Thomas announced a Medicare reform scheme that included a more modest benefit for prescriptions. Their plan, in line with New Democrat thinking, brought some market forces to bear on Medicare. Clinton made sure that his appointees on the commission killed the plan.
On another DLC item, free trade, Clinton and Gore have departed from New Democrat thinking, making a strategic concession to liberal protectionists such as organized labor. Gore even mentioned it in his address to the DLC last month. “I will insist on the authority to enforce workers’ rights, human rights, and environmental protections in those [trade] agreements,” he said. This echoed what is now official Clinton administration policy. Such provisions cannot be tossed off as unenforceable side agreements, but must be integrated into all trade pacts. This will make negotiating trade treaties far more difficult, if not impossible.
Clinton isn’t the only member of his household who’s charged to the left. There’s Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’s not ordinarily thought of as a New Democrat. But DLC leaders have counseled her extensively and consider her sympathetic to their viewpoint. You’d never know it, however, from her unannounced campaign for the Senate in New York. She has talked up liberal issues exclusively, endorsing a higher minimum wage, demanding more money but no reform for Social Security and Medicare, denouncing GOP tax cuts, faulting Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City, her expected Republican rival, for trying “to dismantle the public school system” with vouchers. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times described her as a throwback. Her “campaign strategy . . . evoked Mario Cuomo’s first successful campaign for governor in 1982.”
There’s another sign that Hillary has reverted to 1980s-style liberalism: She’s obsessed with attacking Ronald Reagan. “We need to make sure that we have someone representing New York who will stand up against any effort to go back, to make a U-turn to the days of trickle-down, supply-side economics,” she told a union gathering October 16. “I don’t think Reaganomics and supply-side economics was the right direction for this country.”
If Hillary mimics Cuomo, Gore is the reincarnation of Mondale, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984 and a paragon of old Democratic liberalism. Gore attacks Bradley by linking him to Reagan, just as Mondale zinged his Democratic foe, Senator John Glenn, for backing Reagan’s economic program. Bradley voted for Reagan’s budget cuts in 1981, devastating social welfare programs, according to Gore. This is an incredible stretch — the cuts turned out to be minuscule — but Bradley scarcely defends his vote. Instead, he, too, pummels Reagan, noting that at least he didn’t vote for Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981. (Gore didn’t either.) Gore has also criticized Bradley for voting, with Reagan, to aid the anti-Communist contras in Nicaragua.
At a Democratic dinner in Des Moines on October 9, Gore gave his best Mondale imitation. His appearance was billed by his aides as the “new Gore” — more casual in dress and demeanor. But mostly he was more liberal. He suggested Bradley was a quitter for retiring from Congress in 1996. Unlike Gore, he didn’t “stay and fight” against the Reagan legacy. Of course Reagan left office in 1989, but that didn’t stop Gore. “When Newt Gingrich took over Congress [in 1995] and tried to reinforce Reagan-omics, some walked away.”
Gore makes an occasional bow to New Democrat dogma. He’s for a balanced budget. While Bradley opposes welfare reform, Gore defends it. Rather than propose billions in new spending for the poor, Gore often offers up tax credits, still another New Democrat approach. But this is deceptive. Both Gore and Bradley would expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, geared for the “working poor.” It is a refundable tax credit, which means many recipients get reimbursed for money they never actually paid in taxes. It’s supposed to be an incentive to work, but, in some measure, it’s welfare. For more than 10 million people, income and Social Security taxes are totally offset, making them eligible for a cash bonus. To pay it, the government already spends $ 30 billion a year. Gore and Bradley would have it spend billions more.
In fact, the two have swerved to the left on so many issues that few reporters have bothered to keep track. One who has is Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times. “More Liberal Than You Thought” is the title of an article he wrote about Gore and Bradley in the American Prospect. Gore, he says, “has proposed a more assertive role for the federal government — in areas from education to health care — than President Clinton has risked offering at any point since the Republican congressional takeover in 1994.” Bradley says he’s for “big ideas.” This consists, Brownstein says, of “putting his name on a lengthening list of liberal social and economic priorities.” On most items, Gore’s with him.
Bradley recently unveiled a program of near universal health care coverage. Gore has his own plan to provide health insurance to children and up to 7 million more adults. While Bradley emphasizes more government-funded day care, Gore has put out a plan for universal access to preschool. Both have anti-poverty programs that go well beyond expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Bradley, for example, would let mothers on welfare keep their child support payments without reducing their welfare stipend. Gore, too, would increase the amount of child support. Bradley would require all handguns to be registered. Gore would require all handgun owners to be licensed. Both are for the national enforcement of gay rights, though they would use different means. Both would also bar soft money from campaigns.
It’s a long list, and getting longer all the time. How come? The conventional wisdom about pandering for liberal votes in the primaries is partially true for Bradley and Gore. Bradley knew there wasn’t fertile Democratic ground to plow on Gore’s right. And Gore has been pushed left by a non-Democrat, GOP presidential front-runner George W. Bush. Karl Rove, the top Bush strategist, thinks Gore is alarmed by Bush’s appeal to the political center. So Gore has been forced to distinguish himself from Bush by taking liberal positions. But none of this explains why and Bill and Hillary are also moving left.
So, why have the four most prominent Democrats in America veered to the left (as have many congressional Democrats)? Polls haven’t changed. Roughly twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservatives as liberals. I think it’s two things: the budget surplus and the pitiful performance of Republicans. Freed of the need for fiscal restraint, Democrats instinctively propose new programs. And having seen Republicans fail to stir any grass-roots enthusiasm for cutting taxes, they’ve decided the tax issue has lost its bite. Without it, they figure Republicans will have no popular themes. At least not the Republicans who for two election cycles now — 1996 and 1998 — have stumbled to Election Day without making a dent in Democratic arguments. Perhaps George W. will change all that, but Democrats are gambling he won’t. Who can blame them?
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
