Editor's notebook
Steinfels, Margaret 0 'Brien
AN EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK 'SAFE, LEGAL & RARE' SLOGAN OR SUBSTANCE? ome of my younger friends are charmed by the idea that this is the first presidential election in which they voted for the winner....
...This is the kind of coalition many Americans think America is all about...
...But, thank God, the Republican convention did not fail us...
...The answer rests on which cluster of values represents his real passion...
...Some of my older friends (New Deal division) would brook no criticism of Clinton before the election...
...And hey, at least one kid did get a good job—elected in the nineties by a thirties' coalition...
...he will lift executive orders restricting abortion in federal facilities...
...With a notable exception, everyone, during the campaign, was said to be welcome...
...Except for the state of the economy it could never have been brought back together...
...Delivering on the economy will be part luck, part not scaring rich people too much, and part tight-wire policy making that will cut against the grain of important members of this coalition...
...But this isn't the thirties...
...And then, in an acceptance speech clasping to his heart the middle class, its works and values, Clinton virtually ignored the poor, the vulnerable, the homeless...
...Where does Clinton stand...
...The flurry and flutter around the candidate-couple and the prospect for change summon images of the Kennedys but with a partnership a long way from pill box hats and the touch football boys' club...
...In support of the first two goals, he promises to sign some version of the Freedom of Choice Act...
...At that point, the puzzled voter could reasonably ask, and she did: Except on abortion and gay rights, how was this guy really different from George Bush...
...Abortion-on-demand is not a communitarian impulse...
...After twelve years of ReaganBush, what could have been more depressing than watching a winnable election being lost by factionalism and ideological posturing...
...Why does somebody who invokes the Catholic social tradition, and who does remind so many Americans of what, at its best moments, this country has been about, seem so lame on the one issue that really does require a passion for leaving no one behind...
...Clinton claimed he was different...
...Individualism, self-fulfillment, and rights talk overshadowed communalism and social responsibility...
...Again, just like the rest of us...
...their pandering went beyond ideological posturing...
...Much of sixties communitarianism was drawn off into marginal issues (remember Abby Hoffman) and turned from mainstream politics...
...Clinton's position as governor of Arkansas, at moments in the campaign, and in answer to questions from the United States Catholic Conference suggest that he is not far on abortion from the position represented by Governor Casey's Pennsylvania law...
...While the Democrats' love of the poor can sound like vaporous rhetoric (tinkling bells, and all that), no rhetoric at all was disheartening...
...The boomers and the RR, each in its own, and sometimes contradictory, way converged to make individuals vastly more important than communities, personal autonomy more central than social solidarity...
...Clinton evokes social solidarity: "We can leave no one behind...
...Yet the Democratic party has gone in the opposite direction, economically conservative and socially liberal...
...Abortions will be safe and they will be legal...
...What will Clinton do to make them rare...
...The first thirties' coalition was socially conservative and economically liberal...
...Watching the Democrats in July, who would have guessed that Clinton shared this tradition...
...And the campaign proved him right...
...Safe, legal, and rare...
...Insofar as it still really exists, it remains so...
...he can use it to persuade, argue, plead—just like the rest of us...
...Flying that banner, he will have to live with ambiguity or a high level of disingenuousness—and work for something better...
...So back to the tried and true: the lesser-of-two-evils choice...
...The sixties had two animating passions—personal liberation and communitarianism...
...Which will animate his appointments, his policy making...
...He has been called to a bully pulpit...
...Clinton too favors parental consent and a twenty-four-hour waiting period...
...The eager embrace of homosexual rights as a mainstream party issue seemed a certain loser...
...Yes, the unemployment rate, a sluggish recovery, the decline of real wages, and longterm economic conditions helped get his message across...
...The liberationist baby boomers took flight and in a fit of cultural irony landed in the Reagan revolution...
...Every parent's fear that the kids would never find a decent job was the stealth emotion...
...Where does Bill Clinton stand...
...Refusing Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey a place on the podium while allowing a Republican woman to attack his (moderate) position on abortion law was—not to put too fine a point on it—just plain stupid...
...The Democrats had a chance in '92, so no caveats please...
...He says that he believes "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare...
...But the Democratic party, the party platform, and many voters are prepared to leave at least one group behind...
...His image of the Democratic party was more coherent and comprehensive than the party's own view...
...After the election, they are feeling not just nostalgia but genuine relief that Clinton put the old coalition back together—working and middle classes, ethnics and blacks, Catholics and Jews, union members along with Reagan Democrats, working-class white men...
...No world war (thank God) is on the horizon to pull us out of economic disarray...
...And then there is the coalition's inherent fragility...
...So was his attitude toward the electorate and his articulation of the country's needs...
...MARGARET CTBRIEN STEINFELS...
Vol. 119 • November 1992 • No. 20
