Clinton's Elusive Political Goal: A Place in the History Books

By ROBERT SHOGAN

Nov. 6, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES POLITICAL WRITER

WASHINGTON —

Bill Clinton, who four years ago won the presidency amid a recession by offering himself as an agent of change, gained a second term Tuesday in large part because he successfully cast himself as a defender of long-established relationships between citizens and their government.

But what remains unclear, in the wake of a campaign in which Clinton’s rhetoric raised more questions than it answered about his intentions and his convictions, was how well suited the president’s considerable political gifts will be to the circumstances that could be expected to confront him in the next four years. The answer to that question likely will go a long way toward determining what is sure to preoccupy Clinton--his place in history.

His victory leaves Clinton for the first time in his life with nothing left to run for except a lofty position in the pantheon of presidents. One clear problem for him, though, is that the agenda on which he campaigned was not one designed to leave a lasting imprint.

“I think he has a very strong desire to go down in the history books as an important president,” said presidential scholar William Leuchtenburg, who recalled a conversation last year in which Clinton likened himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt. “But the kinds of things he has been talking about--like uniforms for schoolchildren--are not going to get any space in the history books.”

Of more immediate concern is the issue of how well Clinton has prepared the country for the tough policy choices that loom on a variety of fronts. Some argue that he has done as well as could be expected, given the harsh political realities that face a nation beset by competition for global markets and struggling with a tower of public debt. These analysts contend that although voters may expect more than relentless optimism from their politicians, they do not want to hear solely about the need for sacrifices.

“I don’t think anybody runs for reelection talking like Paul Tsongas,” said Tom Mann, Brookings Institution senior fellow, referring to the 1992 Democratic presidential contender who stressed various belt-tightening prescriptions to erase the federal budget deficit. “I don’t think you run for reelection by telling people you’ve got to cut their entitlements.”

As Mann sees it, Clinton performed a service by using the bully pulpit of his office and his campaign to sketch “a modest but nonetheless continuing important role for government in helping people adapt to a set of truly very revolutionary changes that are proving very disorienting.”

Mann added: “And that’s about as much government as the public will tolerate.”

Others judge the president more harshly.

“The really crunch issues which the nation has to face simply were not on the table during the campaign,” said Colin Campbell, political scientist at Georgetown University, Clinton’s alma mater.

“The future of Medicare, the fallout from welfare reform, what we do in Bosnia--none of these things were discussed,” Campbell said. The people have been told that all they have to worry about are ‘soccer mom’ problems like curfews for their kids. Now each time Clinton has to tackle one of the tough issues in his second term, he’ll have to go through an educational process, and I don’t know whether there is the time do that.”

On one point the analysts agree--Clinton’s reelection strategy was mainly shaped by the GOP seizure of Capitol Hill in the 1994 midterm elections. Ironically, this marked the nadir of his presidency. But after a few months, Clinton reinvigorated his presidency by positioning it as the counterweight to the efforts by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his cohorts to undo as much as they could of a half-century of Democratic activism in government.

“The best thing that happened to us is that we lost the Congress,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes told a friend after he had time to reflect on the 1994 results. “If we had won the Congress by a narrow majority, we would have had to struggle to get anything done. But when the Republicans took over, it became Bill Clinton against the radical Republicans. They defined him better than he could have defined himself.”

Nor did Clinton satisfy himself with merely thwarting Republican initiatives. Instead, he moved aggressively to muffle what had been the GOP’s most potent campaign arguments in recent years, declaring an end to the era of big government, trumpeting his support for family values, stressing his commitment to crime fighting and signing a welfare reform bill that sent paroxysms of protest through his own party.

“Bill Clinton has done what no Democrat has done since FDR,” Mann said. “He has, in effect, thrown down the gauntlet and challenged Republicans for the chance to establish the successor coalition to the New Deal coalition.”

But if Clinton has blocked the GOP from emerging as the nation’s new majority party, he has apparently been unable to achieve that status for his own party.

“There is no indication that the country is ready to say, ‘We are Democrats now and going to be for a new generation,” said Leuchtenburg, the presidential scholar.

Moreover, Clinton faces problems within his own party, many of whose leaders rallied behind him more out of fear of the Republican Congress than allegiance to his policies. “Basically, this a pretty unsettled coalition,” said Ruy Teixeira, a political analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. He noted party differences over such issues as trade and fiscal policy.

Another likely area of conflict: the political rivalry between Vice President Al Gore and Democratic House leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, both of whom are expected to seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2000.

The rivalry has an ideological context to it, because Gephardt--along with other members of the House Democratic leadership--are the voices of what remain of the once-dominant liberal phalanx of the party.

For his part, Gore campaigned for president unsuccessfully in 1988 as a centrist.

Still, the extent of the conflict between them likely will depend on the course of the economy. If the country heads into a recession before the next presidential election, that would clearly hurt the second term of a Clinton administration, and Gore would be among those paying a political price. That would make it harder for him to rally support for his presidential candidacy, thus benefiting Gephardt. And in the long run the chances of any Democrat holding on to the White House in 2000 would suffer if the country were going through tough economic times.

Despite the recovery, wages are sluggish and many families are managing financially only by having two or more wage earners, Teixeira said. He added: “There is nothing stable about Clinton’s situation that a 1% or 2% increase in unemployment won’t blow apart.”

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Winning Margins

Margin of victory and percentage of the popular vote of presidential candidates:

1960 (Democratic victory, 0.2 points)

Kennedy: 49.7%

Nixon: 49.2%

****

1964 (Democratic victory, 22.6 points)

Johnson: 43.4%

Goldwater: 38.5%

****

1968 (Republican victory, 0.7 points)