Can He Be the Strong, Silent Type? : After Oklahoma City and the GOP’s tightfisted budget proposals, Bill Clinton’s approval ratings are up. Now, if he can only keep his mouth shut. . .

President Bill Clinton has been doing great for the past month. And if he could just keep his mouth shut, he’d do even better.

The President’s job-approval rating is at 51%. That figure may not blow your skirts up, but it’s better than he’s done for the past year. Politically, it means he’s not a goner. If Clinton keeps his ratings above 50%, he stands a good chance of getting reelected. In fact, right now the polls show him in a dead heat with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the GOP favorite. Not bad for a guy who looked like a dead duck two months ago.

What happened?

Oklahoma City, for one thing. The night before the bombing, Clinton had to defend his “relevance” at a prime-time news conference. The most telling commentary on his relevance: Two networks didn’t even carry the news conference. Within 24 hours, the President’s relevance was indisputable.

It took a tragedy to remind Americans what they like about Clinton. Remember all those jokes about how Clinton “feels your pain”? Well, we were all feeling pain after the Oklahoma City bombing. The President expressed the country’s pain eloquently at the memorial service. Clinton showed empathy and compassion--what he does best.

But he also showed some fight--something he rarely does well. That may be the main reason his fortunes are looking up.

The President tried to pick a fight with radio talk-show hosts, denouncing them as “purveyors of hatred and division” and “promoters of paranoia.” Critics immediately accused Clinton of attempting to score political points off a tragedy. But the message got through to his liberal base: It was time to stand up to the right-wing bullies and fight back.

Clinton had more success taking on the National Rifle Assn., particularly after former President George Bush provided bipartisan cover. The President skillfully exploited the NRA’s unsavory image by demanding the organization donate its “ill-gotten gains” to a police benevolence fund.

The NRA does not depend on a favorable image for its effectiveness. It thrives on adversity: “us” vs. “them.” Right now, NRA membership is at a record high--3.5 million. “Bill Clinton is the best recruiting tool we’ve got,” one of its organizers said.

Now Clinton has decided to get in on the action by trying a little “us vs. them” politics of his own. In his May 5 speech at Michigan State University, it was “us,” the American people, versus “them,” the militia movement. In his May 15 speech at the police memorial ceremony, it was “us,” the people, versus “them,” the NRA extremists. The NRA’s disrepute makes it a perfect target for Clinton. The President, unlike the NRA, does depend on a favorable public image for his effectiveness.

Republicans were quick to pounce on the President for winning few concessions from President Boris N. Yeltsin on his recent trip to Russia. But the White House had a backup plan: Get tough with Japan. By slapping huge tariffs on Japanese luxury cars, the Administration maximizes the symbolism while minimizing the damage to the American consumer. The free-trade Establishment is horrified. But the Republicans have been struck dumb. Clinton the tough guy? They can’t deal with it.

And now Clinton, the President who once boasted of never having vetoed a single bill, is issuing veto threats like Dirty Harry. You want to cut foreign aid and challenge my foreign-policy authority? You want to turn the food stamp program over to the states? You want to repeal the ban on assault weapons or kill the plan to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets? Go ahead. Make my day.

The President’s threat to veto the rescission bill cutting previously approved spending sounds a little contrived. He differs with Congress on only a small proportion of the cuts. Moreover, some spending that he now denounces as pork is for projects he has supported in the past. Never mind. The President seems eager to send a signal. He’s spoiling for a fight.

The biggest issue is the GOP’s balanced-budget plan, and on that one, too, the White House has taken a tough line: Make ‘em suffer. Democrats have portrayed the GOP’s cuts in projected spending as radical, dangerous and cruel. School lunches! Student loans! Veterans’ benefits! Medicare! To pay for what? Tax cuts for the rich!

It’s working. Polls show strong public resistance to most of the specific cuts the Republicans want to make. But they still show a powerful public commitment to balancing the budget. So once the GOP’s radical ideas are beaten down, the White House will come in and negotiate a compromise. It’ll look like a moderate alternative to reach the same goal. Clinton will sign it and get credit for both balancing the budget and protecting popular programs.

That drives Republicans crazy. They take all the risks, and Clinton gets the credit? No way! They want to force the President to sign their budget. If the Republicans don’t back down, can the President risk refusing to sign their balanced-budget plan? The answer is yes--if the Democrats succeed in demonizing it. And they are doing just that, according to one recent poll. Most Americans say balancing the budget isn’t worth all the pain in the Republicans’ proposal.

For Clinton, it will be delicious revenge on the Republicans for what they did to him last year on health care. When the President proposed radical surgery on the nation’s health-care system, Republicans were initially nervous about appearing to stand in the way of a popular cause. They didn’t want to look “out of it,” like Ronald Reagan or Bush. What recession? What health-care crisis? God bless America!

Along came GOP strategist William Kristol, the Lady Macbeth of the fax machine: “Screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.” Republicans rallied to Kristol’s standard: “There is no health-care crisis.” They convinced Americans that reforming the health-care system wasn’t worth all the pain in Clinton’s proposal. Republicans showed some backbone. And they did not fail.

Now Clinton is trying to show some backbone. For him, that’s a challenge. But he has to do it to redefine his presidency.

Can Clinton really stand up before the American people and say, “There is no deficit crisis”? That’s more or less what he has to do. Republicans know there’s a lot of pain and disruption in their budget plan. They have to ratchet up the stakes and argue, “If we don’t do this, the deficit will destroy us all.” Hence, props like the “national debt clock” and warnings that if we don’t balance the budget, our children’s future will be at risk. The logic is simple: If people believe there’s a budget crisis, they’ll support a radical program.

Clinton has to play down the deficit crisis, just as the GOP played down the health-care crisis, in order to persuade Americans that radical surgery is not needed. Clinton won’t have any trouble unifying the Democrats behind that strategy. They’ve never made a fetish of the deficit, and they don’t believe they were elected to pay the bill for Reaganomics.

The President’s problem is to unify himself behind that strategy. After all, it represents an about-face from the Clinton of 1993--who took office and proclaimed deficit reduction his top priority. It means going back to the Clinton of 1992, who did not win the presidency by championing the cause of deficit reduction. That was Paul E. Tsongas’s issue in the Democratic primaries. It was Ross Perot’s in the general election.

Clinton’s new strategy requires discipline. Yes, he’s for a balanced budget. But no, it’s not a crisis that requires radical action by some arbitrary deadline. It won’t be easy for the President. He’s clearly sensitive to Republican taunts that he’s AWOL on the budget debate.

The President’s discipline slipped last weekend when he suggested, in a radio interview, that he would play the GOP’s game. He said the budget could be balanced within seven years. Or maybe 10 years. Or, in any case, “by a date certain.” And he said he would propose his own “counter-budget” this summer. If he does that, isn’t he admitting a deficit crisis?

Yes. Which is why he shifted gears a few days later and reverted to his original strategy of rejecting any urgency to act under a deadline. On Tuesday, the President emphasized the pain of balancing the budget with “massive tax increases and massive budget cuts.”

Good old Clinton, critics said. Waffling, backtracking, trying to have it both ways. Clinton will have to prove to a skeptical public, and a skeptical press corps, that he has changed, that he’s ready to stand up and fight for what he believes. That he’s had a backbone implant.

His best hope for getting reelected in 1996 is to frame the election as a gigantic reverse midterm. During the 1980s, Democrats did well in midterm elections. You need us in Congress, they would say, to stand up to Republican Presidents and make sure they don’t go too far.

That’s why Clinton is sharpening his veto pen. You need me in the White House, he wants to say next year, to stand up to Congress and make sure those Republican radicals don’t go too far.

It will work only if Clinton can persuade people he’s tough and resolute. Can the Great Empathizer turn into the Great Enforcer? It would certainly surprise the press corps. They’ll write that all he needed was an enemy to stand up to, like the GOP Congress. It would also astonish his critics. “How did this happen?” they will ask. And then they’ll say, “Well, of course. He’s got Lady Macbeth in the White House.”