The Presidency Vanishes Into the Fuzzy ‘Center’

President Clinton has tried to explain the program of his “new vital center,” saying, it “isn’t liberal or conservative; “it’s both and it’s different.” Its task is momentous: to “finish the work of preparing America for the 21st century.” But when the president revealed the menu, the fare consisted mostly of warmed over, rather thin gruel: finish balancing the budget, build more free trade, applaud improved locally controlled schools, trim Medicare and Medicaid, plead with businesses to hire mothers pushed off welfare, reinvent government some more.

All of these are but table scraps from the conservative diet we’ve been served for years. It just isn’t very nourishing any more.

The budget deficit is, in relation to the economy, already the lowest in the industrial world. Bringing it into pure balance may have “psychological” effects, as the president suggests, but won’t do much for interest rates, growth or investment. Indeed, more and more mainstream economists believe that the costs involved in reaching a balanced budget may be far greater than any benefits.

Similarly, tariff barriers have already been slashed. More free trade agreements won’t address the record trade deficits run up primarily with countries like China and Japan that manage access to their markets and target their exports. Reinventing government is a fine slogan, but the White House effort exempts the largest bureaucracy and primary source of waste, fraud and abuse--the Pentagon.

Moreover, the president seems to have no appetite for a serious debate about priorities in an era of limits. With the Pentagon budget exempt, corporate welfare untouchable and fair taxes on the rich unthinkable, balancing the budget leaves little money for anything else, while cutting already inadequate programs for the most vulnerable. Last week, it was revealed that the president’s own draft budget now proposes cutting home heating aid for the elderly and gutting low-income housing assistance, despite the public objections of Clinton’s own housing secretary, Henry Cisneros.

President Clinton admits that “while the era of big government is over, the era of big challenges is not.” The answer is a “new kind of national leadership” fit for the modern condition.

President Clinton summarized it with a line from an old Jackson Five hit--”I’ll be there.” What is needed, he suggests, is a president who will “shine a spotlight on what works anywhere in America.” So he pledged, when business and communities join together to provide jobs for welfare recipients, “I will be there.” When parents and teachers establish standards for our schools, “I will be there.” The new president of the vital center--not chief executive, chief legislator, or commander in chief, but chief Zelig, after the Saul Bellow character who always managed to get in the picture. The president solemnly pledged to “spend the next four years doing everything I can to help communities to help themselves.”

A major White House press conference the very next day exemplified the “ vital center” approach. The president convened the vice president, the secretary of transportation, a gaggle of lesser officials and the CEOs of the nation’s major airlines in the White House. The rhetoric was as grand as the setting was dignified. “We cannot make the world risk-free,” said the president, “but we can reduce the risks we face.” What we announce today, said the vice president, ever the best parody of himself, “is [not only] an important step on the path to improved safety for airline passengers . . . but also it signals . . . a change in how government and this industry work together.”

The momentous path-breaking agreement? The CEOs announced a voluntary pledge to begin in 1997 to install smoke detectors in the cargo holds of most passenger airplanes. Smoke detectors. This is, no doubt, a Good Thing, no matter how long it takes the airlines to install them voluntarily. But under Roosevelt or Johnson, Kennedy or Nixon, even under the Clinton of four years ago, the agreement would have been announced in a press release issued by an assistant secretary at the Transportation Department.

Smoke detectors. Add the mirrors, and you get the essence of the new “vital center.” Fixated on bringing an already tamed deficit to heel, unwilling to take on entrenched interests or address fundamental challenges, the vital center substitutes gesture for reality, movement for action.

But, since the president also called for us to put cynicism behind us, consider the upside. An “I’ll be there” president will always be “relevant.” And the White House will be accessible to more than fat-cat donors booking the Lincoln bedroom. Did your neighbors join in cleaning up the vacant lot? Have the parents in your school decided to put the kids in uniform? Call Bill Clinton. He’ll be there.