Another High-Wire Act for Clinton

When President Bill Clinton delivers his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night in the midst of his impeachment trial, he’ll be betting he can maintain his remarkable record of delivering rousing speeches under risk-filled circumstances.

By now, Americans are used to Clinton striding to the podium at a joint session of Congress and performing a high-wire act without a safety net.

Last year, he spoke just days after Monica S. Lewinsky had become a household name. Two years before that, the federal government had just been shut down. Three years earlier, he had suffered a stunning rebuke when the Republicans captured both houses of Congress. In other years, he had to compete with the verdict in O.J. Simpson’s civil trial, cope with a failing TelePrompTer and jump-start his presidency after a shaky first month. Each time, most people agreed Clinton gave a great speech.

There’s something about Clinton’s presidency that seems to require great speeches to rescue it. And there’s something about this leader that almost always enables him to rise to the occasion.

But this time, Clinton must clear the three highest hurdles he’s ever faced, and that means he’ll need to give the best speech he’s ever delivered--one that moves beyond the cheerful minimalism of the past three years.

First, he needs to lift public discussion above the sordid charges he faces, which reach the level of personal embarrassment, if not presidential impeachment. As in his unusually muted address last year, he will have a harder time using the language of personal responsibility that, in earlier years, enabled him to hit his highest rhetorical notes. But, while Clinton can no longer be the preacher, he can still be the teacher, offering answers to the challenges the nation faces even after the extraordinary economic and social progress his policies have promoted.

Clinton needs to present a new agenda that inspires public support because he faces a second challenge that bedeviled even such popular predecessors as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan in their second terms: How can a lame-duck president push his policies through a hostile Congress?

And, finally, Clinton must clear a hurdle he’s set for himself: not only making it through the next two years but making history as well. While Eisenhower and Reagan took their time before supporting Vice Presidents Richard M. Nixon and George Bush as their successors, Clinton has already anointed Vice President Al Gore. And, more than most presidents, he has mused publicly about his place in history. These ambitions require Clinton to offer an agenda Americans will want to continue well after the conclusion of his second term.

So no matter how many advisors counsel caution, Clinton needs to transcend the formula that got him through the 1996 election and the past two years.

He should return to the approach that helped him overcome harsh personal attacks when he won the presidency in 1992: Remind voters that the challenges they face are more important than the charges he faces. And offer a new agenda for an anxious America plunging into an increasingly turbulent global economy.

Unlike Nixon’s 1974 State of the Union speech in the depths of Watergate, or Reagan’s 1987 address during the Iran-Contra scandal, Clinton is too shrewd a politician to discuss his predicament directly for a few minutes at the beginning or end of his talk. Instead, he can be expected to address his impeachment inferentially all evening.

Perhaps he’ll begin by welcoming the new speaker of the House, the little-known J. Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.). Then, he’ll pay tribute to former speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his fallen successor-to-be, Robert L. Livingston (R-La.). And then, seamlessly, he could call upon both houses of Congress to work together with him in a spirit of bipartisanship and civility. Or else, he might offer a similar statement at the conclusion of his speech, urging the House and Senate to address “the people’s business.”

But, for this appeal to succeed, he’ll need to emphasize the urgency of “the people’s business.” Here, this high-wire artist will walk a rhetorical tightrope: claiming credit for improved economic and social conditions, while imparting urgency to his new agenda.

Rather than begin by bragging about his impressive economic record, Clinton should first congratulate Americans on strengthening the social fabric, with declining levels of violent crime, illegitimate births and welfare dependency.

Clinton should say that his social policies helped people do the right things in their own lives. But, more important, Americans’ increasingly responsible behavior undercuts the most emotive argument against him: that his personal conduct demoralizes the nation.

Turning to the economy, Clinton can be expected to tick off the same favorable facts he cited in a recent address at the Detroit Economic Club: declining unemployment, rising incomes and uninterrupted expansion. But then, he should confound expectations and point to problems that most people fear without fully understanding them: global economic instability, the rising tide of imports threatening jobs in manufacturing, corporate down-sizings that reached record levels last year and the increasing insecurity of health coverage and pension benefits.

As he did over the past year in addresses before elite audiences at the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, Clinton should emphasize the importance of preparing ordinary citizens for international economic competition and preventing globalization from becoming a “race to the bottom” by setting standards for workers’ rights and environmental preservation.

Indeed, “widening the winners’ circle” in the new economy--a phrase Clinton used in addressing the centrist Democratic Leadership Council--can be the theme for a host of initiatives he has announced in recent weeks. These ideas, many of which would solidify his Democratic support, include: raising the minimum wage; protecting patients’ rights in health maintenance organizations; expanding Medicare to include the older workers most vulnerable to downsizing; preventing public schools from promoting failing students; and improving job training. And, in a shrewd attempt to finesse GOP calls for privatizing social-insurance programs, Clinton may repeat his call for using the budget surplus to shore up Social Security and Medicare, while offering working people new investment opportunities through “universal 401Ks.”

To make the case for these proposals, Clinton will need to explain there are still serious problems that require national action. Elevating his agenda is also the best case for bringing his trial to a speedy conclusion.

Yes, Clinton should declare, as he did in Detroit, that “America is working.” But he should also insist that, particularly in preparing our people for unforgiving international competition and making sure that free trade means more than a free-fall in living standards, “America still has a job to do.”

In an irony that the Comeback Kid should appreciate, a State of the Union Address that avoids caution and complacency may be his best bet for becoming the Stay Here Kid this year and a leader with a lasting legacy for years to come.*