Clinton’s Political Recovery Will Be Fleeting Unless He Sticks to Course

One of the lowest points of Bill Clinton’s presidency came during a prime-time news conference in April. Clinton summoned the TV cameras to escape the shadow of the GOP Congress dominating the news, but the evening only underscored how completely he had been eclipsed. Two networks did not even air the event.

Who could blame them? If Clinton’s presidency were a sitcom, it would have been canceled at that point because of low ratings and creative exhaustion. In a capital powered by the frenetic energy of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Clinton looked to be running on empty. While the Republican House briskly checked off the bills in its “contract with America,” Clinton spent months brooding at the White House over his repudiation in the 1994 elections.

“It was like a real bomb that went off over there,” said Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), one of Clinton’s closest congressional allies. “He was looking for someone to blame.”

So it was hardly unreasonable when a reporter delicately asked Clinton at his news conference that April evening whether he thought his voice was still being heard in the national debate. The underlying message in the question coiled like the hook in a worm: Was the President still relevant?

Clinton recognized the real meaning, and bristled as he closed his teeth on it: “The President is relevant here,” he insisted.

It was a forceful response but also revealingly reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s famous declaration during Watergate: “I am not a crook.” Any time a President has to say out loud he’s not crooked, or irrelevant, he has already lost most of the argument.

No one would question Clinton’s relevance today. On both domestic and foreign policy, he is now back in the center of the ring.

Although many Republicans harbor deep reservations about Clinton’s decision to send American troops to Bosnia as peacekeepers, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s announcement that he would back the deployment effectively ensured that Congress would not seriously attempt to stop it.

Meanwhile, Clinton has battled the GOP to a standstill over its seven-year plan to balance the federal budget, and surveys show more Americans trust him than the Republicans in the dispute. Polls of early sentiment in next year’s presidential race now show Clinton holding a steady lead over Dole, the clear GOP front-runner.

How has Clinton recovered? One reason is the inherent authority of the presidency.

In foreign policy, Congress has great difficulty derailing a President with a clear direction. Early last week, Dole complained that Clinton had placed Congress in an “unfortunate situation”: Either endorse his plan or risk undermining American credibility abroad. Dole was right; but that’s how determined Presidents control foreign policy.

On domestic policy, Congress has much less trouble saying no to a President--as even Democrats demonstrated during Clinton’s tumultuous first two years. But it isn’t easy for Congress to push its ideas past a President dug in against them.

By resisting the GOP budget while seizing control of policy in Bosnia, Clinton is pressing at both points of the President’s maximum constitutional leverage: To say yes in foreign affairs and no on domestic policy.

Republican mistakes are the second reason for Clinton’s revival. The GOP advance flagged when the party embraced an overly ideological balanced-budget plan that attempted to reduce the growth of spending too sharply in popular programs--particularly Medicare--and frightened away voters in the center.

That overreach--a mirror of the President’s miscalculations in last year’s health care debate--sent Gingrich’s approval rating into a tailspin and provided Clinton the chance to recover his voice. “He was in a funk,” Breaux said. “It wasn’t like he said: ‘I’m coming out of my funk.’ Circumstances brought him out.”

In amplifying his opposition to the GOP budget plan over the summer and fall, Clinton stirred the demoralized Democratic base. More important, after wavering on so many issues throughout his presidency, his opposition to the GOP blueprint allowed him to project an image of strength and principle. Clinton has reverted to old habits along the way--cravenly renouncing his 1993 tax increase, sending mixed signals on welfare reform--but mostly the budget confrontation “has given him a chance to look like he’s got solid ground on which he won’t budge,” said presidential historian Robert Dallek.

The third, and perhaps most important, ingredient in Clinton’s recovery has been his willingness to take risks. For most of his presidency, Clinton’s policy toward Bosnia was a monument to indecision. He came into office with a strong idea--to bolster the Bosnian Muslims with arms shipments and air strikes. But he wilted when the NATO allies rejected his plan early in 1993.

Clinton spent most of the next two years on the defensive. At home, his efforts focused mostly on stopping legislation, sponsored by Dole, to unilaterally breach the international arms embargo against Bosnia. Abroad, he ineffectually brandished carrots and sticks that the Bosnian Serbs ignored.

Clinton didn’t regain the initiative until last summer. Under pressure both from French criticism of his inaction and fresh Bosnian Serb atrocities, he accepted a series of escalating risks: Authorizing the sustained bombing campaign that, along with a Croatian offensive in August, forced the Bosnian Serbs to the bargaining table; convening the peace talks that led to the agreement in Dayton, Ohio, last month; moving to deploy the American troops that constitute the cornerstone of the peacekeeping force.

On the budget too, it was a gamble that brought Clinton back into the game. When he released his own 10-year plan for balancing the budget last summer, congressional Democrats howled that he had undermined their attacks on the GOP plan. But Clinton’s bet proved correct--that issuing his own plan would allow Democrats to shift the debate from whether the budget should be balanced to how.

The weak link in Clinton’s gambit was the uncertainty of his commitment to a balanced budget. But to this day Republicans have let him off easy by insisting on a highly partisan plan that virtually all Democrats feel comfortable opposing. Clinton’s play remains uncalled.

On both the political and policy front, it is easy to overstate Clinton’s resurgence. His own job-approval rating, although up slightly from earlier this year, remains adrift around a mediocre 50%--and even that showing may owe more to rising doubts about the GOP than swelling confidence in Clinton. “When you go to his report card on questions like effectiveness, leadership, character . . . for most of 1995 it has been pretty weak,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

On domestic policy, Clinton is still operating in a world whose borders are defined by the GOP. He has rejected some Republican ideas, but the federal government is inexorably being remodeled to conservative specifications. That was underscored last week when Clinton signed the shortsighted legislation overturning the federal speed limit. Even on the budget, the basic question is one shaped by Republicans: how much and what to cut.

All that notwithstanding, Clinton’s position has improved dramatically since last spring. Maintaining his momentum, however, will require him to do something he has not done very well since taking office: Sticking to his course.

On both the budget and Bosnia, Clinton can’t protect his gains without accepting more risks. Peace won’t bloom in the Balkans without many bad days along the way; if Clinton hurries home the troops at the first reversal, the mission will be doomed.

Likewise, Clinton probably can’t push the GOP toward a budget deal he can accept unless he’s willing to risk reaching no agreement at all. Nor can he indefinitely blame the GOP for the impasse if he isn’t willing to risk putting forward his own plan for reaching balance in seven years.

Clinton’s presidency once again has a pulse. But it may prove fleeting if in the weeks ahead he also doesn’t demonstrate a spine.

The Washington Outlook column appears here every other Monday.