Washington’s conventional wisdom has Republicans salivating at...

Washington’s conventional wisdom has Republicans salivating at the political parallels between Watergate and Whitewater. With President Richard M. Nixon’s disgrace, Democrats benefited as demoralized GOP voters stayed home in the 1974 elections. Two years later, Jimmy Carter, an unknown, one-term governor from Georgia, defeated the Republican incumbent, Gerald R. Ford, largely on the promise, “I will never lie to you.” With President Bill Clinton’s disgrace, Republicans gloat about consolidating their hold on Congress and running the 2000 presidential race with a squeaky-clean candidate promising, “I will never embarrass you.”

Ironically, a serious comparison of Watergate and Whitewater, of Nixon and Clinton, suggests something far different. The stark contrasts should sober Republicans in the short term, and the striking parallels will hearten Democrats--or at least progressives--in the longer run.

Republicans shouldn’t break out the champagne yet. Clinton’s hapless attempts to cover up his tawdry private affair pale in comparison to Nixon’s abuse of his public powers. And the partisan witch hunt being staged by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), with its shameless public debasing of the president, contrasts starkly with the bipartisan gravitas of the Watergate proceedings. No amount of puffery can turn Monica S. Lewinsky into John W. Dean III, or the maniacal zealotry of Starr into the judicious independence of Leon Jaworski. Unlike the Watergate proceedings, which slowly united much of the country against Nixon, GOP excesses may well be creating a backlash that could ignite Democrats and sour independents against them.

At the same time, the more interesting historical parallels between the Nixon and Clinton eras will hearten progressives more than conservatives. For just as Nixon’s resignation delayed, but did not forestall, the conservative triumph, Clinton’s disgrace may delay, but need not preclude, a progressive resurgence.

Nixon was elected at the end of a liberal era of reform. He tacked to the prevailing winds, expanding Medicare, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, recognizing China, pushing detente and cutting the defense budget. The more he donned liberal garb, the more liberals despised him--and rightly so. With his conservative theme of law and order, jeremiads about “acid, amnesty and abortion,” patriotic appeals to the “silent majority” and clever race-baiting politics, he was providing the message and strategy for a conservative resurgence.

But Nixon’s election didn’t end the long liberal era, nor did his disgrace save it. What brought it to a close was the global economic crisis generated by the inflation unleashed by the Vietnam War that discredited the liberal economics of the postwar era.

Nixon didn’t foresee this and was victimized by it. He declared, “We are all Keynesians,” and imposed wage and price controls to keep inflation under check while goosing the economy for his reelection. His popularity plummeted not with the Watergate revelations but as inflation unhinged prosperity. His resignation came when it was apparent that he could not govern effectively at a time of significant economic turmoil.

Clinton, a liberal president at the end of the conservative era, writhes in a similar bind. He has borrowed liberally from conservatives, from V-chips to school uniforms, balancing the budget to embracing free trade. The more he has stolen conservatives’ themes, the more they despise him--and rightly so. For they understand that Clinton is mapping the way for a progressive resurgence through his populist appeal to middle-class working people, his call for investing in children and education, his focus on health care and his stealthy redistribution policies (raising taxes on the wealthy while giving the working poor a break).

But just as Clinton’s election didn’t begin a progressive era, his disgrace need not condemn it. What is bringing the conservative era to a close is the global economic crisis that represents the bankruptcy of corporate-defined order.

Like Nixon, Clinton didn’t anticipate the collapse and may be a casualty of it. He announced, “The era of big government is over,” just as speculators were running amok and dramatic government intervention became imperative.

Now, Clinton’s great peril is that confidence in his presidency will plummet as the deflation unleashed by the tides of speculative capital washes up on these shores. In the end, Clinton’s survival may depend on whether he can sustain growth at home and revive it abroad. This is likely to require abandoning the embrace of conservative, International Monetary Fund-Wall Street economics and beginning the process of taming the global marketplace.

The collapse of the old order is more important politically than presidential disgrace. In 1974, Democrats picked up suburban seats on both coasts but ended up culturally divorced from their working-class base. Carter was elected, but conservatives stayed on the march. They continued their intellectual assault on liberal economic policies and detente in foreign policy. Elite opinion shifted. Gas lines and soaring prices soured the public on government action. The last two years of Carter’s term were simply a milder version of the Reagan years, featuring deregulation, tight money to quash inflation, increasing unemployment and increased military spending.

Similarly, Clinton’s travails may well allow the GOP to pick up swing districts, particularly in the South. But the Republicans will grow more divided about the social and economic agenda of their right-wing base. Elite opinion is already shifting on the need for government intervention in the global economy. Rising unemployment and plant closings will rouse public demands for government action. The next president may be forced to begin progressive reform of the global economy.

Economic sea changes set the frame for politics; they don’t predetermine outcomes. Conservatives recovered from Nixon’s resignation because they kept moving. They used his defeat to consolidate their hold on the GOP. Ronald Reagan carried the conservative banner into the primaries in 1976 and almost defeated the incumbent, Ford. Corporations continued their assault against unions and regulation. Conservative cause groups--the Committee on the Present Danger, the Moral Majority--organized sophisticated media and grass-roots campaigns against detente and sin. Nixon’s political strategy--using populist social values and patriotism to woo working-class voters while consolidating the party in the South with race-baiting posturing--was pursued with a passion.

Progressive Democrats, so disheartened now, might benefit from this example. A progressive challenge in Democratic primaries in 2000 might be vital to raise the banner and energize the base. Activists should join the campaigns of revived labor against corporate excess and for government action to get the economy working for working people. Progressive movements--women, the environment, civil rights--can use the extremism of the GOP Congress to expand their reach.

Progressives also can learn from the poetry of Clinton’s campaigns and combine a populist economic agenda that appeals to working people and a mainstream values posture on education and crime, while defending social liberalism to consolidate a multiracial party that makes the GOP pay for its Southern-based politics of racial exclusion.

History does not do reruns. The fallout from the global crisis we are entering is unpredictable. If global deflation engulfs the United States, as many economists fear, politics could turn ugly--to a protectionist, social reaction of a Patrick J. Buchanan or Gary L. Bauer. But one thing is clear: Clinton’s disgrace, like Nixon’s, takes place at the end of an era. The conservative era is bankrupt. The struggle is to define what comes next.*