How Many Times Will Bill Clinton Blink?
Springtime in Washington, and in ways too subtle for the tourists to notice, the Clinton presidency has begun turning soggy around the edges. This has not been a failure of brains and energy; during his first 100 days, Bill Clinton brilliantly established his presidential voice and articulated grand new visions for the nation. But doubts have begun to accumulate about crasser questions of how this president does politics, the patterns of style and strategy that will determine whether his visions become real or dissolve into yesterday’s rhetoric.
As with every new president, the political community has been taking his measure. Back in February, politicians of both parties were taken aback by Clinton’s bold proposals —– progressive tax increases and budget cuts aimed at numerous sacred cows. He also dazzled at televised town meetings and invented a new form of political dialogue with his timber summit in the Northwest. Swift congressional action on his budget plan and other measures reflected goodwill but also respect from other politicians.
But should they fear him? Must they bend to his will? Or can they safely maneuver around him? That’s the basic, visceral question rival politicians ask in private. And though it is not yet fully answered about the new president, the initial evidence is worrisome, even ominous. On some large strategic matters and small parochial issues, Clinton has blinked.
In February, when he announced his economic plan, Clinton put down some controversial markers to demonstrate his reformer credentials by proposing to eliminate a host of hoary subsidies long protected by congressional privilege. Six weeks later, the president folded on many of these, ingratiating himself with Democratic senators to win their votes.
In the West, Senator Max Baucus of Montana and others pleaded for a pass on raising cattle-grazing fees on public lands and collecting royalties on mineral mining. Clinton yielded. In the South, Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama wanted to continue the Tennessee Valley Authority’s pointless program for fertilizer subsidy. Clinton granted the favor. From the Northeast, senators sought and won a lighter levy on heating oil under the president’s new energy tax. From the Midwest, farm-state senators got a tax exemption for grain-based ethanol.
In his State of the Union speech, Clinton proposed to phase out nuclear-power research, but his Energy Department has backed off the idea. As a candidate, Clinton called for raising auto-fuel-efficiency standards to forty miles per gallon by 2000. But Carol Browner, his Environmental Protection Agency administrator, journeyed to Detroit for a meeting with the Big Three auto executives at which she promised to consider alternatives to such standards.
During two campaign visits to Ohio, Al Gore promised local activists that a Clinton administration would block operation of a new toxic-waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, because its fumes threaten a nearby elementary school and residences. The Clinton White House danced away from Gore’s pledge, and despite continuing protests, the EPA refused to block the incinerator’s operating permit.
Is there a pattern in these episodes? “Yeah,” cracks one White House staffer, “the pattern is that Bill Clinton is not Al Gore, and this is not the green millennium.”
The other pattern, of course, might be described as politics as usual. No president can possibly get his way without some horse-trading, but did Clinton really need to cave in to Max Baucus? If he yields so quickly on grazing rights, what’ll he be like when the really brutal infighting gets under way on taxes and budget cuts?
The rap on Clinton, both as Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, was that he was too disposed to accommodate opposition —– eagerly avoiding conflict by yielding on the nettlesome details of governance. Washington players are naturally alert to signs of the same behavior. “The question is: Does he have the sturdiness of character to hew to a line when things get hard?” asks Stephen Bell, a Republican veteran of congressional struggles. “There are doubts.”
White House staffers dismiss these worries as misplaced, but they grant that an aura of weakness could threaten Clinton, even if it is a misperception. The White House set out ostentatiously to punish Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama for his negative comments and votes on the economic plan –— shifting nearly a hundred federal jobs from Alabama to elsewhere. Staffers are searching for other ways to exercise concrete discipline on uncooperative legislators in both parties.
“We’re trying to make a distinction between the big things where you don’t go against us and the other things where we are willing to compromise,” an aide explains. “Three weeks ago, everyone was saying we were weak and could be pushed. Now, we’re being denounced as Nixonian. That’s progress.”
Is Clinton really willing to be Nixonian? This question of style is likely to dog Clinton, partly because it is attached to his character. He seems acutely sensitive to the powers that be, anxious for the approval of important personages in government and in business. Yet Clinton also identifies with the less fortunate, especially those working people whose livelihoods are under so much pressure.
The question of style also reflects the confusion that is implicit in his governing posture. Does Clinton wish to be the outsider who forces Washington to reform, or the masterful insider who collaborates with the status quo to accomplish some things? The problem is, Clinton wants not to have to choose.
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Clinton’s lack of forceful definition is nowhere more painfully evident than in his economic program. He ran for office and won by relentlessly focusing the debate on jobs, jobs, jobs. But once elected, he maneuvered to a very different priority —– a five-year plan designed to shrink the deficit by half. As a candidate, Clinton argued effectively that deficit reduction was not the be-all and end-all of economic policy. As president, he has put deficit reduction at the center of his program.
The debate is now focused almost entirely on the question of whether Clinton can actually deliver on his deficit goals, never mind what happens to the real economy of jobs and wages. Thus, in his effort to impress and appease the governing elites, Clinton has allowed himself to be co-opted by their conventional wisdom.
In the public’s mind, deficit reduction is being driven by Ross Perot and his supporters. But before Perot came along, the deficit was the obsession of conservative economists and Wall Street financiers like Pete Peterson. These are the people Clinton seems inordinately eager to please. So he stacked up a major program of tax increases and budget cuts that would eventually trim $140 billion from the annual deficit.
But at the same time he’s not quite willing to give up on candidate Clinton’s promises, so he also proposed adding $16 billion to the 1993 deficit —– extra spending up front that would supposedly add vigor to the sodden and jobless recovery. This was a shade too cute. Why should Congress go in both directions at once? The apparent contradiction is too tricky to explain in the broad strokes required for debate on the national stage.
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