Clinton Has Mandate--Either Use It or Lose It : Election: There is public support for a specific agenda of the President-elect. But, above all, he must avoid becoming a Washington insider.

If only the Nov. 3 exit polling included a printout of what voters wanted the new Administration to do for the next four years--a real-life portrait of his “mandate.” Without it, special inter ests may get back in the saddle, turning the gridlock of 1992 into the bipartisan “greedlock” of 1993.

Bill Clinton wouldn’t be the first President to campaign like an outsider and govern like a longtime member of the club. For Republicans to say Clinton got elected because he sounded like a conservative is wrong, and so is the GOP insistence that there’s no mandate because of Clinton’s 43% plurality. This is total moonshine.

Questions about Clinton’s trustworthiness, however, did pop back into the news last week. No sooner did the President-elect make his first visit to Washington than three things happened.

First, he enjoyed a love-fest with the same congressional Democratic leadership he shunned during the campaign. Second, he appointed as transition chief one of the rich, insider Washington lawyers with multiple corporate directorships that his campaign rhetoric disparaged. Third, word leaked out that his advisers have been weighing plans to dump the promised middle-class tax cut and carry out the sort of cuts in middle-class entitlement programs that candidate Clinton promised not to make. If so, one of George Bush’s warnings will come true--middle-class Americans will again have to watch their wallets.

The irony, ignored by much of bipartisan Washington, is that Clinton actually got a huge indirect mandate. Remember that the bottom fell out of the GOP presidential coalition. Bush won almost two points less of the total vote in 1992 than poor Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Indeed, the 16-point tumble in the GOP percentage between 1988 and 1992 ranks up there with the other watershed signals of U.S. electoral history: the 16-point collapse in the Democratic presidential vote from 1856 to Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860; the 18-point plunge in the GOP between 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 triumph, and the 18-point Democratic hemorrhage between 1964 and 1968, when the presidency passed to Richard M. Nixon and the GOP for 20 of the next 24 years.

It was a massive rejection of Bush, of his weak economic management and his bias toward government on behalf of the rich. All charges that Clinton voiced during the campaign--back when he was avoiding the Democratic congressional leaders, who would probably have shared Bush’s electoral raspberry had the national electorate voted on them, too.

However, while the 1992 election delivered one of those angry shake-up Washington mandates that status quo politicians prefer to ignore, the three-way race helped to confuse things.

In such races, the winner, to perceive his “mandate” must look at the combined vote total of the candidates with outsider themes. In 1860, when Lincoln got 39% in a four-way race, there was no workable electoral mandate because the Civil War had to come. But in 1912, Woodrow Wilson rightly concluded that the combination of his 41% with Theodore Roosevelt’s third-party support sounded a trumpet for progressivism; and in 1968, Nixon could plausibly combine his 43% and George C. Wallace’s 13% to come up with a mandate for a “Middle American” anti-Washington revolution emphasizing cultural and law-and-order issues. The obvious basis for an indirect 1992 mandate, in turn, lies in the overlap between the two anti-Bush populist outsiders--Clinton and Ross Perot--who together drew a powerful 62%.

The most important mandates of 1992 reflect voters’ undisputed concerns that Clinton must act to stimulate the economy, manage health-care costs and reduce the federal budget deficit. If Clinton can do these things, the rest won’t matter much--and if he can’t, the other themes won’t matter much either. However, it is possible to look at the overlap between Clinton and Perot on a half-dozen issues and see an important group of secondary mandates. What’s less clear is whether Clinton can rise far enough above big contributors, Washington lobbyists, special interests and entrenched Democratic congressional interests to act on them:

Less emphasis on internationalism and more focus on U.S. problems. This was clearly an important theme. Perot was outspoken, but Clinton, too, hinted in many of the same directions. Of the relatively few voters who gave foreign policy much importance, most voted for Bush. So this isn’t Clinton’s constituency. But the odds are that Democratic and bipartisan internationalist elites in Washington and New York will pull Clinton toward involvements that voters don’t favor. Public preferences may not count heavily enough.

Doubts about U.S.-Mexican Free Trade. Perot’s opposition appealed to swing voters, especially in the Great Lakes, and Clinton has to go slow and demonstrate skepticism here.

A national industrial strategy. Perot and Clinton both favored an active business-government partnership, while Bush was critical. Perot supporters should applaud Clinton’s strategic initiatives.

Increased taxes on the rich. Perot, like Clinton, talked about the rich not paying enough, and both favored raising the top rate. This, too, represents an obvious secondary mandate of the 1992 election.

A crackdown on Washington lobbyists and interest groups. Perot got so much mileage voicing this popular frustration that Clinton also picked it up--and he and the Democratic Congress will clearly deliver some legislation on reform of lobbying and campaign finance.

Yet, there are reasons for skepticism. Whereas previous watersheds caused parties with “outsider” psychologies to take over in Washington--for example, the Republicans of 1860 and 1968 and the Democrats of 1932--the changeover of 1992 is different. Clinton and today’s Democrats may turn out to be “pseudo-outsiders” because their entrenched congressional relationships and interest-group ties make a serious crack-down impossible.

Tactically, of course, those anxious to lock Clinton into an insider approach to government keep reminding him how outsiderism failed for Jimmy Carter. This is a bad comparison, though, because voter contempt for political and economic elites is far greater now.

This 1990s intensity is obvious, given term-limitation successes and Perot’s appeal as a potential national rotorooter-man-cum-scourge of lobbyists. But this time, in contrast to the Watergate aftermath, the trend is global--evident by recent votes in Canada (over unity arrangements) and in Europe (over Maastricht). These poll results are being widely analyzed as reflecting hostility to local political, economic and media elites. Clinton tapped into this psychology during the campaign, but he could lose it by turning into another Washington insider.

A bit of history is in order. Since 1977, failure on the Potomac has come in three different flavors. From 1977 to 1980, policy-making bogged down in the mutual distaste of Democratic President Carter and the Democratic Congress. During the Reagan era, from 1981 to 1986, the GOP President had a GOP Senate--and the Democratic House frequently went along. The result could be called “spendlock”--with so many spending increases and tax cuts that the deficit went into overdrive.

Then, from 1987 to 1992, conservative GOP presidents faced a generally liberal Democratic Congress. The result: classic gridlock.

The future problem might be described as “greedlock.” In this scenario, the Democratic President and Democratic Congress manage to work together in early 1993, but then bog down in special-interest group demands and commitments when the big economic and health issues come to the fore.

Beyond that, if the economy remains weak, then the GOP should be able to gain 3-5 Senate seats and 10-20 House seats in 1994. That would reverse the 1987-92 gridlock pattern of a GOP President blocked by a liberal Congress and instead mirror 1951-52, when a moderately liberal President (Harry S. Truman) was blocked by a relatively conservative Democratic Congress. Clinton, too, could be stymied.

The caution to the new President is clear: Get your mandate straight--and then use it or lose it.