NEWS ANALYSIS : President Once Again Seeks to Calm the ‘Anxious Class’

With Thursday night’s address from the White House, President Clinton returned to the struggle that has preoccupied him since he first pointed his ambition beyond the borders of Arkansas.

In virtually every signature speech he has delivered on the national stage--from the May, 1991, address to the Democratic Leadership Council that effectively launched his presidential campaign to his nomination acceptance speech in 1992 to his State of the Union messages--Clinton has sought to portray himself as the product and defender of what he often calls “the forgotten middle class.”

Leaving no ambiguity Thursday night, he labeled his new agenda a “middle-class bill of rights.”

In the short term, these speeches have often bolstered Clinton’s standing. But within months, as if locked into some oddly elliptical orbit, he has inevitably found himself back in the same corner--struggling to regain the approval of middle-income voters alienated by policy missteps or accusations of personal impropriety.

Clinton raised the ante Thursday with promises of a middle-class tax cut and massive cuts in federal spending--with many of the cuts to be itemized later. But even many Democrats are uncertain to what extent disappointed voters are open to once again reconsidering their view of him.

“People haven’t closed the door on him,” says Democratic consultant Brian Lunde, “but the door is only cracked open; it’s not wide open.”

Moreover, Clinton begins this latest struggle for recovery with less control over his political fate than at any point since he survived the New Hampshire primary in 1992.

In Washington, the initiative has palpably passed from the White House to congressional Republicans. They are eager to cement their new legislative majority and position the party for 1996 by marginalizing Clinton’s ideas and implementing their own agenda of tax reductions, sweeping budget cuts and hard-edged reforms in social programs.

And after two years of stirring speeches sunk by uneven follow-through, even many Democrats are leery of investing too much hope that one address can restore Clinton’s frayed fortunes.

“What it comes down to in the simplest terms is this is a President who has several great opening moves on the chessboard, but he never has an end game. . . ,” said one senior Democratic strategist.

Clinton’s political targeting was evident in his economic message: By focusing his tax cut on families with young children earning $60,000 or less, offering expanded federal efforts to support education and training (including a new tax deduction for college tuition expenses) and promising to streamline and retrench government, he aimed his new agenda precisely at the uneasy middle-income voters Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich has termed “the anxious class.”

Those voters--whom Clinton has long sought to champion--turned decisively against him and the Democrats last November. The heart of the historic New Deal coalition, white working- and middle-class voters, broke resoundingly for Republicans in November: According to one exit poll, whites earning from $15,000 to $30,000 voted Republican by between 45% and 55%; those earning from $30,000 to $50,000 voted Republican by a 3-to-2 margin. Compounding the problem, younger whites without a college education--who leaned strongly Democratic as a group in 1992--expressed their dissatisfaction with Clinton by staying away from the polls in large numbers, according to a post-election survey by Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster.

All of those economically strapped voters were the people Clinton had in mind when he said Thursday: “More jobs aren’t enough. We have to raise incomes.”

Republicans rang up their majorities among middle-income citizens last fall by directing voter anger over income stagnation and economic insecurity at government and politicians, and to a slightly lesser extent, welfare recipients, violent juveniles and illegal immigrants.

Clinton’s speech sought to direct the anger toward more traditional targets as he contrasted his agenda with Republican proposals he has said would favor the rich. The GOP “contract with America” would provide a children’s tax credit for families with incomes up to $200,000 and reduce taxes on capital gains; Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) on Thursday proposed doubling the children’s exemption to $5,000 for families of any income.

“The contrast we want to draw is that they are not proposing anything that will lift the prospects of average working Americans,” said one Administration official.

The speech suggested another critical contrast sure to drive debate in the months ahead: While Republicans portray government primarily as a barrier to opportunity--in the GOP response newly elected Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson said Republicans viewed their mandate as cutting “government down to size”--Clinton remains resolute in his contention that government can be reformed to expand and promote opportunity.

Clinton underscored that belief by comparing his plan to the GI Bill that sent millions of returning World War II veterans to college and consecrated a faith that has almost entirely evaporated over the past quarter century: that government could uplift the broad middle class. “I want a leaner, not a meaner, government, a government that’s back on the side of hard-working Americans,” Clinton declared.

As an economic blueprint, Clinton’s plan is bound to draw criticism for failing to specifically identify all the spending cuts that would offset his tax reductions--after weeks during which the President repeatedly claimed he would only propose a tax cut if he could pay for it. That criticism may be somewhat academic for a reason hardly comforting to the White House: With Republicans controlling Congress, there’s virtually no prospect of the plan passing in anything resembling the form Clinton described anyway.

Indeed, in this latest attempt to regain the grace of the middle class, Clinton is operating with an extremely weakened hand. While the threat of presidential vetoes--and Senate Democratic filibusters--give Democrats some leverage to influence legislation in the coming session, Clinton will be able to advance his agenda only if Republicans first stumble and fail.

Some Republicans quickly claimed Thursday night that Clinton had capitulated to their agenda. But the differences between Clinton’s plan--with its insistent emphasis on the middle class--and the GOP agenda--which rains benefits even on the upper rungs of the income ladder--suggest the opportunities that a direct confrontation may provide him.

And yet many analysts believe that in a fundamental sense, Clinton’s most important opponent is himself--specifically the questions about his integrity and leadership. Clinton himself indirectly acknowledged the doubts about his leadership when he declared, “My goal for the next two years will be country first and politics as usual dead last.”

It was a stirring declaration--but not one that a man with the country’s faith would have had to unfurl.