ERSKINE BOWLES, THE NEW White House chief of staff, made only one mistake when he trekked to Capitol Hill on December 5 to woo two dozen moderate House Republicans, and it was a small one. He and John Hilley, the White House congressional lobbyist, referred to the “Kennedy-Kassebaum” health-care bill passed last summer. That rubbed Rep. Bill Thomas of California the wrong way. Thomas insisted it’s the “Kassebaum-Kennedy” bill: The name of the majority- party sponsor, GOP senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, comes first, not Teddy Kennedy’s Aside from that, everything Bowles said went over swimmingly. He’s pro-business and bent on balancing the federal budget, Bowles insisted. He’s an honest broker — just ask North Carolina Republicans like former congressman Alex McMillan, whose campaign Bowles backed financially, and Sen. Jesse Helms, who grew up with Bowles’s father “I keep my word,” Bowles said. ” I’m going to be open and honest. I’m going to return your phone calls.”
Love-bombing of Republicans by the Clinton White House is not entirely a new phenomenon. And it’s not a reliable indicator of real bipartisan sentiments at the White House either. The president courted Republicans in seeking NAFTA ratification in 1993 and even made a few conciliatory gestures during the health care struggle in 1994. But bipartisanship was not sustainable. Clinton governed at the mercy of congressional Democrats, and they weren’t interested in dealing with Republicans.
Now, in Clinton’s second term, bipartisanship has a second chance. For what it’s worth — and I’m not holding my breath — that’s bipartisanship that works chiefly off a conservative agenda. “Things have changed [at the White House],” a senior Clinton aide notes. Bowles’s pitch to Republicans ” reflects where the president’s head is.” Another adviser adds: “The one thing Clinton knows for sure is he’s for working it out [with Republicans], not fighting it out.” Better yet, the president is said to accept the necessity of governing through a center-right coalition. Given the two top items on Clinton’s agenda balancing the budget and figuring out how to curb entitlements — that probably can’t be avoided anyway.
“There’s really a good word for describing that agenda, besides New Democrat — it’s Republican,” a White House official confesses, without embarrassment. True, Clinton wants other things — a rollback of parts of the welfare reform bill, more education spending — that liberal Democrats relish. But those are secondary, at least for now. Clinton is eager to revive the spirit of last summer, when he and Republicans agreed on a welfare bill and Kassebaum-Kennedy and added tax breaks for small business to the hike in the minimum wage.
Still skeptical? “Watch what the president does,” says an aide. “Watch what he says.” Yes, Clinton has said the right things about compromising with Republicans, rather than using them as a foil again. “It is time to put country ahead of party,” he said in Little Rock on election night. The voters “are sending up a message: Work together, meet our challenges, put aside the politics of division, and build America’s community together.” At his press conference on November 8, Clinton declared he’s tried to “make it clear that we understand the American people want us to work together with the Republicans and that we have to build a vital center.” With Clinton, however, words are often political tools, unrelated to his true intentions.
Clinton’s actions speak louder. The liberal axis at the White House — chief of staff Leon Panetta, deputy Harold Ickes, and George Stephanopoulos — is gone. Bowles, an investment banker by trade, is far more conservative than Panetta. Communications director Don Baer, another moderate voice around Clinton, is staying. So is press secretary Mike McCurry, a closet New Democrat. (Another strong moderate at the White House, Bill Curry, is returning in January to Connecticut, where he’ll probably run for governor in 1998.) Clinton’s selection of a new foreign policy team shows some concern for Republican sensibilities. He abandoned his first choice for secretary of state, George Mitchell, at least partly because Republicans loathe him. Many Republicans, notably Senate Foreign Relations chairman Jesse Helms, preferred Madeleine Albright, whom Clinton named. She, after all, has been pursuing, as United Nations ambassador, the GOP-instigated effort to force out secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. And while former senator Bill Cohen of Maine, picked for defense secretary, is no favorite of conservatives, he’s a Republican.
Despite the good vibes, serious impediments to a Clinton-GOP detente remain. Some White House advisers feel conservative Republicans hate Clinton and thus aren’t ready to do business. Congressional Republicans need to show “a somewhat less adolescent attitude,” an aide says. “Our biggest problem will not be getting Democrats but getting conservative Republicans.” If they push social issues, especially another ban on partial-birth abortion, that “would not set us in the right direction,” another Clinton adviser warns.
The biggest obstacle, from the White House viewpoint, is Republican hearings on Indogate and other Clinton scandals. “If they decide to go full bore, we’ll wind up with an atmosphere that’s very bitter,” says a Clinton aide. “It’s a huge test,” the aide insists, of the GOP’s desire for bipartisanship. The president makes the same case. Should Republicans go easy on investigations, he said on November 8, “the American people will be very well pleased by the work we do together, and we will get a lot done.” This is pretty cynical stuff, an attempt by Clinton to exploit the mood of bipartisanship to curb scandal hearings, which terrify the White House. It won’t work.
My guess is liberal Democrats, docile in 1996, will be a bigger problem than Clinton and his aides acknowledge. The president is famously susceptible to pressure, and liberals are bound to exert a lot. Clinton, for instance, doesn’t want to mount an aggressive drive to defeat the balanced budget amendment. But Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Gene Sperling, the White House economics adviser, do. And they may yet prevail. Democrats on Capitol Hill also may prevent Clinton from moving sharply toward Republicans on Medicare, tax cuts, and other issues.
For sure, the president is wary of irritating congressional Democrats by apologizing to Republicans for his exaggerated attacks on their plans for Medicare reform. “You will not see the president in the Oval Office wearing sackcloth,” an aide says. One reason is Clinton doesn’t think he said anything out of line about the GOP and Medicare. The larger reason is he doesn’t want to side openly with Republicans on the main campaign issue invoked by Democrats this fall.
Among Clinton’s advisers, there’s a known and an unknown on the question of compromising with Republicans. The known is Bowles: He wants to. His appeal to Republicans was “encouraging,” says GOP congressman Fred Upton, who hosted the Bowles appearance. The unknown is Vice President Al Gore. If liberals are angry at the White House, that won’t help him win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. Watch Gore to see how far bipartisanship is likely to go at the Clinton White House, a Clinton aide suggests. Good advice for Republicans.
by Fred Barnes
