Clinton Just Talked the Talk on Idealism . . . : Presidency: Americans are dispirited not because his programs stalled, but because he failed to fight for a more caring and less cynical nation.

As Democrats struggle to hold on to their control of Congress, they are astounded to find that the success of Bill Clinton’s economic programs doesn’t seem to impress the American people so much. The notion popular among pundits and political analysts that what people really care about is their narrow material self-interest is belied by the present widespread unease and unhappiness in America, despite a robust economy. The accepted wisdom that “it’s the economy, stupid,” has proved deeply misleading.

The irony here is that Clinton himself seemed to understand that when he ran for the presidency in 1992. Over and over again he talked of the lack of vision and lack of moral compass for which the country hungered. While the media focused their attention on the economic aspects of his program, many Americans heard something very different: the sense that here was a man who might return us to the hopefulness, idealism and sense of common purpose that they deeply desire.

They heard these themes again when Hillary Rodham Clinton articulated her vision of a “politics of meaning.” In her April, 1993, address in Austin, labeled the kickoff speech for her health-care campaign, she boldly told the country, “The market knows the price of everything but the value of nothing,” and went on to insist that the country faced a spiritual and ethical crisis.

After 24 years in which narrow material self-interest was being proclaimed the “common sense” of American society, years in which Americans had made books like “Looking Out for No. 1” and “Winning Through Intimidation” into bestsellers as they struggled to find out how to survive in the ruthless competition of the marketplace, many people were hoping for a real change. They imagined that the Democrats, under the visionary leadership of the Clintons, would chart a new path.

The strategy for a politics of meaning was simple and straightforward: It challenged America to switch the dominant discourse from an ethos of selfishness and cynicism to an ethos of caring and idealism.

As such, it did not require the President to win any specific legislative battles. All that was needed was for the Clintons to articulate an ethical vision of what America could be, instruct their Administration to endorse only programs that could be easily understood to be derived from that vision and then to put forward and fight for legislation that embodied the vision.

Instead, the Clintons refused to fight for their own ideals. The moment cynical media began to ridicule the notion that people could be motivated by something besides self-interest, the Clintons, instead of standing their ground and fighting, quickly abandoned their politics of meaning and turned toward opportunism. Those who had supported the Clintons were astounded to find the highest priorities being given to programs like deficit reduction and the North American Free Trade Agreement or a massive jail-building and death-penalty expanding project called the crime bill--all of which seemed more designed to win the hearts of traditional conservatives or to demonstrate that Clinton could win legislative battles that showed how “presidential” (that is, playing the game the way the press and Washington insiders wanted) he could be.

If the President himself seemed unable to stand up for the notion of transcending selfishness, if he seemed to be putting his own narrow political well-being over the need to stand strong for principles, most Americans quickly concluded that they would have to be fools to risk their own self-interest. Though they momentarily hoped that things could be different and responded to Clinton’s call for change when that seemed to be his agenda, they had been burned too frequently to stay loyal to a vision of politics that seemed to call for self-sacrifice (higher taxes, higher health-care premiums or at least the need to navigate a bureaucratic maze) if those who called for change really didn’t believe it possible themselves.

Democrats like to blame their current problems on the Republicans and the monied interests. It is certainly true that many of the elites of wealth and power in America threw enormous resources into blocking the best parts of Clinton’s legislative program. Fearful that he was serious about “change,” these elites and their allies in both parties in Congress were willing to thwart the will of the American majority on many issues in order to try to make Clinton look ineffective. And the moment Clinton took office, he was subjected to an unprecedented assault by media determined to expose his weaknesses, highlight his vacillations on his own principles and undermine his popular support.

But Americans are not dispirited because Clinton failed to get his program through Congress, but rather because Clinton failed to fight for a coherent vision of a more caring and less cynical America. The most influential presidents of the postwar years have not been those who were most effective in passing legislation (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, for example) but those who managed to popularize their vision of what the country needed. President John F. Kennedy managed to legitimate an ethos of idealism in the country that created the context for social movements that went far beyond anything Kennedy himself had contemplated. President Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, legitimated an ethos of selfishness that set the framework of assumptions that even today continues to underlie people’s desires for lower taxes and less government.

And this is what Clinton could have done too, even though assuming office with less than an electoral majority and even though he faced a hostile press and fearful ruling elites. Clinton’s one undeniable strength was his ability to listen to people and validate their concerns. He was in a perfect position to show the American public that their hunger for meaning and purpose that could transcend the me-firstism and narcissism being generated by the competitive marketplace would best be addressed by developing a new communitarian ethos.

Clinton could have challenged the extremes of individualism in both the conservative and liberal traditions--and argued for the need of a new commitment to each other. He could have developed legislation aimed not at pleasing congressional conservatives but at educating an American public to what kind of country would be possible for them if the bottom line in America was switched from selfishness to mutual responsibility and solidarity. Clinton could have lost every electoral battle and nevertheless increased his popularity and that of his party had he been understood to be fighting for a society based on caring and had his Administration become the lightning rod in the struggle against cynicism.

Ironically, this perception of Clinton’s willingness to lose legislative battles would have given him the popularity to make those losses less likely. Similarly, had his fight for health care not been crippled by a desire to compromise with the profit interests of the insurance companies, he could have designed a plan that was far less a bureaucratic monstrosity, perhaps a variant of single-payer versions, that would have rallied far more popular support than the plan with which he eventually lost.

Here, then, is the tragedy of Clinton. He is a good man, but a scared man. And his fears are transparent and get communicated to the rest of the country. If even the President of the United States doesn’t have the backbone to fight for a vision that could transcend selfishness, then how are ordinary citizens supposed to do that in their personal lives? The task seems impossible. So people return to the ethos of Reagan/Bush, but they do so not out of great joy, but in deep disappointment--because most Americans, while doubting that a world based on idealism is possible, nevertheless wish it were.

No wonder, then, that so many people are depressed. They feel angry and suckered by the Democrats. They wonder if it will ever be possible to reconstitute an America based on principles that transcend the selfishness and me-firstism of the market. And though in the end they may rally to the Democrats on Election Day for fear of the even worse consequences of Republicans who proudly proclaim the principles of market selfishness as the basis of salvation, they will do so without enthusiasm and without much hope.

Unless Clinton can recast his presidency as a crusade for principles in the next two years--and reconstitute a serious campaign for a poltics of meaning-- you can expect this collective emotional depression to deepen in the years ahead. And in such a climate, you can expect that the Christian Right and others who flourish in climates of despair to deepen their influence and impact in American politics.