From Bush to Clinton: Continuity Versus Change : High hopes for the new President on Inauguration Day

After 12 years of Republican rule, the White House goes Democratic. It’s certainly a moment of redemption for Democrats, and for Republicans an occasion for at least solemn pause. But for the nation at large--a nation that is now largely nonpartisan --today’s inaugural ritual, make no mistake about it, punctuates a new direction. A man named Bill Clinton has arrived.

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY: Today’s challenges seem more daunting than at any time since the days of F. D. R. Yes, the Cold War, blessedly, is over, but smaller and in some ways even nastier conflicts erupt almost every month. During his brilliant campaign Clinton promised to focus on the U.S. economy “like a laser.” But the world, from Moscow to Mogadishu, from Belgrade to Baghdad, will just not sit still. The President of the United States is the titular leader of the Western World. The world’s demands on him will roar in his face the moment he puts his hands on the Bible to take the oath of office.

Even so, the economic focus must not be lost. As the new President has often pointed out, America cannot remain a strategic superpower unless it remains an economic superpower. But the U.S. economy remains very troubled--and many Americans remain troubled about it. The outgoing President--to a fault loyal to his advisers--gambled that the economy would right itself; that gamble cost him dearly.

THE BUSH PRESIDENCY: It may be that no President is in reality as good as his best public-approval rating, nor as bad as his worst one. If true, George Herbert Walker Bush was not ever as great a President as his Desert Storm poll ratings, nor as awful a chief executive as the dreary poll results of last year.

Bush followed the presidency of Ronald Reagan that at times seemed almost magical in its sense of direction. But even Reagan’s Teflon was thinning by 1988. Even so, in foreign policy there were triumphs for Bush.

But the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the thawing of the Cold War and the astonishing collapse of the Soviet empire occurred so rapidly that perhaps few people fully comprehend even today the colossal magnitude of the change. While a bad economy and a desire for change may have been Bush’s undoing, historians may reflect quite favorably on his management of the post-Cold War transition and, especially, his handling of Mideast peace talks.

CONTINUITY: In the end it could be that this present era of power-transfer may be marked more by continuity than change. Clinton has already suggested the need to revise his economic plans--claiming that the federal deficit is even more ominous than feared. And the new President has already suspended his dramatically different Haitian policy and linked up with the Bush policy that he once criticized. Other dramatic U-turns may be in the works.

Continuity is hardly all bad, of course. And America never seems more self-confident and masterly as when the world witnesses the extraordinarily ritualistic, and peaceful, handing over of power from one President to another. But certainly Clinton was elected to preside not over the second Bush Administration but Bill Clinton’s first. That means the American people will want action and results. The economy is the biggest part of the problem but it is not all that ails us. Our cities smolder amid racial and ethnic tensions; our public school systems shoulder new burdens amid encrusted central bureaucracies; people are laid off as old jobs disappear and new ones emerge for which the work force is unprepared; about 37 million Americans have no health coverage and those who have it often pay too much for it--to mention only a few other obvious issues.

William Jefferson Clinton was elected for change. The continuity part will take care of itself. The challenge will be to marshal public support for intelligent policy change in those areas of American life where better government can still make a difference. That’s an awesome challenge. But it is a worthy one. We wish the new President great success.