President Clinton’s First Year: Why the Promise of Success Remains

Today President Clinton celebrates his first anniversary as President, and on the whole it ought to be a happy occasion for the 47-year-old politician from Arkansas. Clinton came into office on a promise to do something about America’s social and economic problems, and there’s no doubt that he has been a dynamic bundle of nearly round-the clock activity. If effort were everything this first year would have been an unmitigated winner. But effort isn’t everything.

CLINTON AND CONGRESS: People who count such things point out that Clinton has won 88.6% of his legislative battles, more than any President since Dwight D. Eisenhower, including the legendary persuader Lyndon B. Johnson.

It wasn’t easy, but Clinton managed to sell Congress on a budget aimed at cooling off the nation’s deficit spending. And the President has begun to deliver on his commitments to de-escalate the highly polarized debate over the preservation of key but increasingly threatened federal resources such as wetlands, ancient forests and endangered species and to ease the dispute over mining and grazing on federal land.

And early in the term, though he stumbled badly on the issue of gays in the military, Clinton did right by lifting the gag order on doctors at federally funded family-planning clinics as well as the ban on fetal tissue research, and by signing the Family and Medical Leave Act.

THE DOMESTIC FOCUS: In what may be a trademark feature, the Administration rarely has hesitated to take aim at social and economic issues that have befuddled America for years. The President, with help from his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, merits high praise for leadership in proposing long-overdue health care reform. On another thorny issue, Clinton’s welfare task force is examining all the hot-button options--time-limited benefits, mandatory work requirements and other so-called tough-love reforms that most Democrats would have found anathema a decade ago. Although no bills have yet been introduced, Clinton gets credit for helping to firm up the new bipartisan bottom line: No work, no pay. That significant and critical consensus ought to be exploited now. But the Administration’s game plan, as we understand it, is to concentrate on health care reform this year and get around to welfare later in the term. Why? Welfare reform is politically doable, while health care reform is much more problematic.

Clinton certainly deserves high marks for taking on what previous administrations have ducked. For instance, in an impassioned speech to black ministers in November, the President invoked the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to challenge the black community to tackle illegitimacy, crime and other pervasive ills.

APPOINTMENTS: The President got a lamentably slow start on filling the huge number of vacant federal judgeships he inherited. But he has made significant headway and won praise for the range and caliber of his nominees. Most notable perhaps has been his appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court.

However, in other respects the appointment process remains in considerable disarray, and many top positions remain unfilled. Lani Guinier, Clinton’s choice for the top civil rights post in the Justice Department, wasn’t the only nominee done in by political misfires. Clinton’s first selection for attorney general, Zoe Baird, ran into trouble and ultimately imploded, as did his second. On Tuesday retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman withdrew as the President’s candidate for defense secretary. The National Labor Relations Board still lacks a quorum as the nomination of Bill Gould remains in limbo.

FOREIGN POLICY: Congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement may be Clinton’s greatest policy success so far. He pulled out all the stops and put his prestige on the line--as he did with our allies abroad in nailing down the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade after years of negotiations.

The Administration has been steadfast in supporting Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. However, that steadiness stood out against too many foreign policy inconsistencies and vacillations. Like other presidents, Clinton has had to learn valuable foreign policy lessons on the job. The lesson he learned in Somalia is the need to be clear about the mission of any foreign intervention and to not exceed that mission. The deadline he set for full U.S. withdrawal from Somalia should help put that no-win situation behind him.

Haiti and Bosnia gave Clinton a lesson that should not have been needed: Never, ever, make threats that the country is unwilling or incapable of carrying out. Vacillation over Bosnia made the President look feeble and without leadership skills in the face of a clear humanitarian outrage. In Haiti, the hasty retreat ordered for U.S. forces in response to a demonstration by a handful of street thugs made the United States look ridiculous and powerless.

On the Middle East, the Administration inherited a beneficial process and has been able to keep it going. It cannot yet claim any credit for brokering a breakthrough.

The picture on Asia is promising. Clinton wisely recognizes that the United States can and should capitalize on the economic boom in most of Asia. But sticky problems remain with Japan and China.

THE POLITICAL CLOUD: Clinton’s delaying and his contradictory answers to the continuing questions about his involvement in the Whitewater affair didn’t help to shake his “Slick Willie” nickname. But, overall, he gives evidence of growing in the job. At the same time the national economy shows signs of life. A healthy economy can be a President’s biggest political asset. If Clinton can learn from his first-year mistakes and the economy can return to its former healthy self, his presidency may prove to be a strong one indeed.