In Lompoc, Left and Right in Agreement on Clinton

Mack “Like the Truck” Conaway, proud proprietor of Coffee Beans & Things, does not, will not, cannot talk politics, but then again, maybe he should not either.

Presiding over a sort of Central Coast salon here in the struggling Valley of the Flowers, Conaway pours latte many mornings for the liberal-leaning Romeos (Retired Old Men Eating Out).

Most afternoons, a louder crowd congregates at the big round table in the back, an elastic group of hard-right, Limbaugh-listening small-business owners, Lompoc’s affluent Republicans.

With just five weeks to go until election day, both factions seem inured to a Bob Dole defeat, since the Republican candidate trails so badly in the polls.

And if you shear off the bombast from the boys in the back, the two tables aren’t all that far apart either when it comes to the more intriguing question, the one that puzzles pollsters and White House aides alike:

If American voters are, indeed, poised to reelect President Clinton, as the polls seem to indicate, just what do they expect him to accomplish in a second term?

The answer in this graceful little city, seems to be “not much.” A middling first term, they figure here, will probably spawn a middling second.

All in all, history will remember Clinton “not very powerfully,” whether he serves one term or two, says Democrat Gene Stevens, point man for the Romeos, who carries in his pocket on a recent morning a newspaper clipping with this doleful headline: “Number of Jobs Lost Still Climbing.”

“Maybe he’ll stop running for reelection and stay in Washington and hopefully do a good job,” said a doubtful E. W. Cox, Republican and retired florist, the man who seems to hold the highest hopes of all his conservative coffee buddies.

Lompoc is a kind of demographic Golden State in miniature, a bellwether for California attitudes toward politics and politicians. Since the race for the White House kicked off nearly a year ago, The Times has interviewed scores of the city’s residents about the issues that weigh heaviest on their minds.

Listening to voters from here helps flesh out the findings of opinion polls: Clinton appears to be both the beneficiary and the victim of lowered expectations. Conservatives do not greatly fear his reelection for the same reason that liberals do not find great cheer in it. This is not a time, voters seem to be saying, in which a president can make huge changes for good or ill.

There’s no hope at all for a Clinton balanced budget here in the cozy coffeehouse on H Street, but some of Mack’s clientele are sort of optimistic about health care reform by 2000. Worries about Clinton judicial appointments bump up against weak optimism for the prospect of better schools.

Don Mead, an ostrich farmer and Republican who hates big government and flirts with voting Libertarian, perhaps expresses the prevailing sentiment best.

If push came to shove, and it looked like Dole had half a chance, he’d cast his ballot for Clinton--”a consummate moron, a wonderful politician”--because he says he is more afraid of the religious right than the big-government left.

The one thing that Mead does not fear is the thing that Dole is warning voters most about these days: That once the spotlight of the campaign has been turned off, Clinton will leave his carefully tended centrist stances and become an unrepentant liberal.

“It’s not his choice,” said Mead, crossing his work-worn fingers and offering his forecast for a second Clinton term. “If Congress stays Republican, I don’t think he can get any of his agenda through if he becomes a liberal. He could turn as far left as he wants, and all he could do is butt heads.”

From Coffee Beans & Things to the South Side Coffee Co., Arthur Hapgood Elementary School to the Santa Barbara park-and-ride, local sentiment in this verdant valley echoes the lukewarm electorate reflected in current national polls.

In a Los Angeles Times Poll of 1,522 likely voters nationwide this month, a large majority said they intend to vote for Clinton. But those surveyed offered low expectations for a second term.

On balancing the budget, for example, more than two-thirds of those surveyed predicted that the president would fail.

In the back of Mack’s coffeehouse, the loud ones laugh and laugh and laugh when even asked about a balanced budget in Clinton II. At the Clean Air Express bus stop a mile or so away, where commuting Lompoc residents catch cheap rides to Santa Barbara jobs, a much more sympathetic voter comes to a much gentler version of the same harsh answer:

“I don’t see that happening,” said Michael Barnes, 21, a Democrat and Wal-Mart department manager, as he sits in his dusty Jetta waiting for his sister, Latasha. Clinton “has a lot of limitations. I think he’ll help it, but I don’t think he’ll balance anything for the better.”

Latasha Barnes, 23, and a Dole supporter, is even more emphatic. “No way,” she said, as she hurried off to night school while commenting on what she sees as a failure of leadership. “One person can’t do it. There’s nothing you can do in no four years. It takes time and unity, and he doesn’t have that now.”

Nor do many seem to believe Clinton’s pledge that he can deliver a smaller, more efficient federal government. With a Club Fed prison and a shape-shifting military base--twice closed and oft-changed in its long and difficult history--Lompoc has existed for the better part of a century prey to the vagaries of an inconsistent federal government. While many here would like to see a far less expensive and expansive bureaucracy, few expect to see it happen.

“Honestly, I think [government] will probably get bigger,” said Frank T. Garcia, a counselor at Hapgood school. “They always seem to cut some, then they always go back to it again.”

But that doesn’t bother this grandfather and veteran of the Army and Navy. The clients who come through his office door are small children with big burdens; they have learning disabilities and absent parents, difficult pasts and bleak futures.

“I honestly feel that this country should take care of the elderly and children,” Garcia said. “You need big government for that. You can’t ask for outside help. Just look at United Way. The money keeps getting lower and lower.”

At Sissy’s Uptown Cafe on I Street--a sun-dried-tomato restaurant in a meat-and-potatoes town--chef and owner Sonseeah Gil, is understandably pushing the sandwich special: grilled chicken, eggplant, fennel and carrots on fresh, chewy sourdough bread.

Gil plans to vote for Clinton but will probably back incumbent Rep. Andrea Seastrand, a conservative Republican, over Walter Capps, her liberal Democratic challenger, in one of the tightest, most closely watched congressional races nationwide. Capps, she said, will just cost too much money; “Nobody can afford to vote for him.”

Nobody can afford health insurance either, especially if they own a small business in a struggling town in coastal California, said Gil.

The Times Poll indicated that Americans are more optimistic about Clinton’s prospects on that than on the budget, with 55% saying they believe Clinton could make progress on that issue in a second term.

Gil would love to see that happen. “If insurance were affordable, I’d provide it for my employees,” she said. “I don’t even have it for myself. It’s my biggest worry.” But, she added, she did not know what shape health care reform should take or whether Clinton really can pass such a measure after spectacular failure early in his tenure.

Jerry Johnson, who teaches math part time at Allan Hancock Community College, considers Clinton’s “failed attempt at national health insurance” to be both the high and low point of his first term. On the one hand, the effort brought a national spotlight to a thorny issue. On the other, it didn’t work.

Johnson has some hope that Clinton will give health care reform one more shot if he is reelected. As a heart-transplant patient with a $1,000-a-month bill for medication, he has a vested interest in affordable health care.

“Everybody’s downsizing, and my wife’s job could go any day,” he said. “I’m not asking for government-paid insurance. I hope there’s always affordable health care that we can pay for out of our own pocket. . . . I hope Clinton makes some effort.”

Johnson also believes that a second term for Clinton would include ample education reform, an arduous task that in all likelihood would be even harder to accomplish than a balanced budget.

On the campaign trail, as Johnson noted, Clinton has made education a major issue:

“I want us in the next four years to make at least two years of community college education as universal for every American of any age who wants it as a high school education is today,” said the president, who plans to fund such an initiative with a tax credit of up to $1,500 a year.

That is Teema Sayre’s greatest hope, among the first entries on both her Term II wish list and catalog of Clinton expectations. She is 19, she is out of work, she is whiling away this sunny afternoon alternately looking for a job and puffing Marlboro Lights on the patio of the South Side Coffee Co., a sort of living room for Lompoc’s multiply pierced set.

“I’m hoping he does something for the education system to make it more viable for us lower-income people to go to school,” Sayre said. “He has done enough for welfare [reform] but not enough for those not on welfare. It’s really hard to find work if you’re under 25.”

She should know. She wants to go to junior college. She wants to be an auto mechanic. She’d settle for any sort of work right now. And she is guardedly optimistic that her president will help her.

“I’ve been in high school for three of his four years in office,” she noted. “He needs to do something about funding for education. I’m hoping he’ll follow through with all the things he promised.”