Watch the pen when President Clinton signs the Kennedy-Kassebaum health care bill in September. It may quiver. In January 1994, Clinton ostentatiously held up another presidential pen during his State of the Union address. “If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away,” he told members of Congress, “you will force me to take this pen, veto the legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start all over again.” Kennedy-Kassebaum enacts some health-insurance reforms but provides no such guarantee. Clinton intends to sign it anyway.
Liberal Democrats have tried to dress up the president’s capitulation as a victory. Sen. Ted Kennedy claims Republicans “have decided that they need to pass Democratic initiatives before the election because their own record is too empty and too shameful to run on.” Nonsense. Despite Kennedy’s name on it, the bill is breathtakingly far from what Democrats really want. In fact, it’s considerably narrower than even the most conservative legislation introduced by Republicans in 1994 when health care topped the national agenda. Yet KennedyKassebaum cleared Congress only after mandated mental-health coverage, favored by liberals, was dropped and medical savings accounts, wildly popular among conservatives, were added.
The point should be obvious: The conservative revolution in America roars on. True, the Republican revolution has stumbled. The partisan realignment toward the GOP has halted (though it hasn’t been reversed). Given the fickleness of politics, this isn’t surprising, and it may be temporary. But what hasn’t changed is the underlying ideological trend in the country, which is less prone to fits and starts. It’s all the more conservative.
As a result, the debate in Washington (and more often than not in statehouses, too) has been transformed. The overarching question is not whether there should be a balanced budget, but whose version is better, congressional Republicans’ or the one they extracted from Clinton. On Medicare, the issue isn’t how to expand coverage but how to rein in spending. On taxes, the question is not whether to cut but how much and when. Before trashing Bob Dole’s taxreduction plan on CNN on August 4, White House economist Laura Tyson took pains to spell out tax cuts proposed by Clinton (” tax cuts for middle-income families, a child credit, a tax deduction for education and training, a whole scholarship tax credit . . .”).
Clinton, of course, has made heroic adjustments to the conservative mood, seemingly unaware of where he is heading. Consciously or not, he’s become in many ways a more conservative president than Ronald Reagan. For all his popularity, Reagan never dreamed of de-entitling welfare and handing it over to the states — and cutting spending in the bargain. Yet Clinton has agreed to this and more (denying welfare to noncitizens, for example).
Reagan never came close to his cherished dream of a balanced budget. But Clinton, hectored by Republicans, has produced one that at least reaches balance after seven years — without a tax hike. And he’s expected to submit another in 1997. As much as Reagan relished slashing federal spending, he never managed an absolute cut in real discretionary spending. This summer, Clinton and congressional Republicans agreed to one. Reagan trimmed around the edges of Medicare and other entitlements. But Clinton, while denouncing GOP entitlement cuts, has proposed far deeper reductions than Reagan. And if he’s reelected, he’s likely to propose even deeper cuts next year.
There’s more. Reagan strongly supported prayer in school but did little to achieve it. Clinton issued an executive order to facilitate school prayer. Reagan complained about the content of movies and television shows (on weekends at Camp David, he screened 1930s and 1940s films). Clinton went further, jawboning television moguls to establish a rating system for TV shows similar to the one for movies. My guess is Reagan looked fondly on school uniforms and curfews for teenagers, but he never said so. Clinton has made uniforms and curfews a major talking point in his speeches.
Okay, Clinton isn’t sincere in lurching to the right. That’s what’s so telling about his makeover. In truth, he’d rather emulate Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. His inclination is to beef up the federal government, create new antipoverty programs, and introduce fresh entitlements. But he’s afraid to. He correctly gauges that the country is too conservative for any of that.
Poll after poll reminds him. On the central issue of the role of government, more than 60 percent of Americans now favor fewer services and lower taxes. Two decades ago, only 40 percent wanted less government. What’s the biggest threat to America: big government, big business, or big labor? In 1979, 43 percent said big government; last year, 64 percent said so. Is government doing too much? In March 1993, 43 percent said yes. In January 1996, 58 percent said yes. On some conservative issues — the death penalty, balancing the budget, term limits — three-fourths or more of the public has been supportive for years. But on others, such as making English the nation’s official language, backing has soared in the 1990s. “I can’t think of anything that’s changing in a liberal direction,” says polling expert Karlyn Bowman.
The effect of all this on the 1996 election is palpable, and it goes beyond Clinton’s embrace of conservative ideas. In Senate and House races, liberals are running as moderates, moderates as conservatives, and conservatives as real conservatives. Suddenly, Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, a noisy liberal seeking a second term, isn’t so liberal anymore. Once a passionate foe of capital punishment, he recently backed the death penalty for terrorists. He voted against welfare reform in July, but he’s declared in TV spots that he supports “workfare,” though he’s voted against it as well. Now, he’s for term limits and against same-sex marriage. Wellstone contends he’s not positioning himself toward the center but has simply modified some of this views based on what he’s “learned from people.”
In Virginia in June, moderate Republican senator John Warner won a primary battle against conservative Jim Miller by declaring himself a Reaganite. “He fought to rebuild America’s military,” a Warner TV spot declared, “and worked at Ronald Reagan’s side to help end the Cold War.” The ad also credited Warner with a “95 percent conservative coalition rating” and “common-sense conservative leadership.” That tack doesn’t always work. In Kansas, Sen. Sheila Frahm, a moderate appointed in June to fill Dole’s seat, portrayed herself as a “conservative voice” in the August 6 primary. She lost to Rep. Sam Brownback, who’s more conservative.
Not to be outdone, the Democratic platform has taken on conservative coloration. The draft text set for adoption at the Democratic convention in Chicago says: “We have worked hard over the last four years to rein in big government, slash burdensome regulations, eliminate wasteful programs, and shift problem-solving out of Washington.” Guess what the platform says is the most powerful force to cope with national problems and create a stable future? It’s “personal responsibility.” By the way, the official agenda of congressional Democrats for 1997 is dubbed “Families First.” Wonder where they got that idea?
Most Democrats have little credibility posing as moderates or conservatives. So the conservative undertow ought to further Republican realignment, adding a GOP president to Republican control of Congress. But realignments don’t move in a straight line. In the heyday of liberal Democrats from 1932 to 1980, Republicans elected two presidents and captured Congress twice. Democratic presidents often faltered: Roosevelt in the second New Deal, Truman with various scandals, Johnson in Vietnam.
Chances are, Clinton will defeat Dole, and Republicans will hold the House and Senate. But scores of Republicans are vulnerable. Unlike Democratic members of Congress who withstood the reelection landslides of Richard Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984, many Republicans are not entrenched. More than half the GOP House members have served only one or two terms. After failing to impose their program on Clinton last winter and suffering politically for trying, they’ve recovered a bit. In new polls by Time/CNN, Reuters, and the Pew Research Center, voters are evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats on whom they prefer for Congress. Earlier in 1996, Democrats had a nine-point advantage.
What Republicans lack this year is the very thing that spurred them in 1994: economic and social issues working in their favor. Pollster Fred Steeper concluded that social issues provided the biggest single impetus for Republicans in 1994. Now, many GOP leaders are leery of issues like abortion, gay rights, and quotas. “It’s safer to talk about tax cuts and spending and balancing the budget,” says Steeper. “There’s unanimity [among Republicans]. On cultural issues, there’s not as great a unanimity.” For the realignment to advance, there needs to be.
By Fred Barnes
