The Danger of Political Smugness

...Countdown'96 THE DANGER OF POLITICAL SMUGNESS BY ANDREW J GLASS WASHINGTON DAVID MCCULLOUGH wondered the other day whether President Clinton ever has time to think Our system of governance, the historian and author of Ti uman fears, leaves precious little room for that sort of thing This is especially true during the home stretch of a Presidential election campaign, when the candidates are virtually on autopilot and steer clear of any thoughts that might detract from their precooked, scripted, focus-grouped messages If Bill Clinton did have the time, though, he could do worse than reflect on the dialectical process that has brought him within striking distance of becoming the third Democrat this century, after Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D Roosevelt, to win a second term Having run as a Centrist advocate of change in 1992, Clmton hurt himself during the early years of his Administration by assuming a posture that resulted in the public perceiving him as simply another Big Government type This was not entirely true, to be sure He halved the Federal budget deficit, drove through the North American Free Trade Agreement, substantially shrank the bureaucracy, and pursued a tough-love approach to welfare reform—all New Democrat stuff Nevertheless, he often sounded like an Old Democrat From the sparring over gays in the military to his bloated health caie scheme to the arrogance pervading the political culture of the White House, Clinton came across as Jimmy Carter II Were ours a parliamentary system, the 1994 referendum on his performance wouldhave cost him hisjob Instead, the Democratic Congressional debacle all but insured his re-election in 1996 The turnaround, of course, was a consequence of the Republicans fatally misreading their mandate, plus the voters' residual anger at them for allowing chunks of the Federal government to shut down in a failed effort to force Clinton to accede to their spending cuts But the President seized the opportunity smartly, casting himself as a reasonable reformer eager to protect ordinary folks against the "extremists' on Capitol Hill Clinton is now taunted by his Republican challenger for defending the status quo Yet that Bob Dole happens to be right in this instance has not done much to advance his White House quest To begin with, it is no secret that the former Senate Majority Leader spent over three decades in Congress doing largely the same Moreover, Dole faces the seemingly impossible task of convincing Americans that it is time for a change in a period of relative peace abroad and prosperity at home Given the present rather upbeat national mood, in fact, Clinton's new smugness should help him rack up votes It is apparent, however, that the postelection policy synthesis (to carry forward the Hegelian motif) will have little to do with the rhetoric of the campaign The scaling down and redistribution of huge entitlement programs like Medicare, for example, cannot be accomplished without the kind of bipartisan effort that overhauled Social Security in the early 1980s And while nobody has given much consideration to foreign policy mis season, it is not an area that can be ignored Certainly a new consensus has to be reached on what kind of rough work a military superpower ought to undertake ANDREW J GLASS a longtime conn Alitor heads the Cox Washington bmeaii in an increasingly fragmented and unstable world Vice President Al Gore did not demur when at a lunch in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, I noted the disconnectbetween what lsbeing said and what actually needs to be done Privately, he may have thought I was crackers to suggest his attacks on the Republicans will make Clinton's post-November agenda—and, one might add, his awn political future—that much more problematic In any event, the campaign has remained practically formula-bound CONTRARY to the impression you get from television these days, though, the Presidential race is really 51 races that are being run simultaneously on parallel tracks Furthermore, they are not even-length matches The District of Columbia, for instance, has only three electoral votes, California leads the list with 54—fully 20 per cent of the total needed for victory The candidate garnering at least 270 electoral votes wins the prize, to be claimed on the South Portico of the Capitol at noon on January 20, 1997 a rent-free four-year lease on the White House The taxpayers have earmarked $61.8 million each for the Clinton and Dole campaigns (Ross Perot is running under a handicap, his third-place showing in '92 has qualified him for a meie $29 million in public funds ) Although the contenders have great leeway in deciding how to use this money it is against the law to spend more and it would be foolish to spend any less Prudence dictates that Clinton and Dole target about 320 electoral votes, since a strategy of hitting 270 on the nose is too risky The trick, therefore, comes down to picking the right races and employing the allotted funds effectively to produce the magic number on Election Day The guiding principle is to avoid devoting serious sums to contests that are sure, or nearly sure, to be won—or lost Such handicapping is not as easy as many might think?although the Clinton camp came close to calling it on the nose in 1992 It lost only one targeted race (North Carolina 14 votes), and one race believed hopeless proved a freebie (Nevada 3 votes) Since Clinton entered the contest as an incumbent with a big lead in the national polls it is his race to lose on a fairly narrow hack Of the 104 million Americans likely to cast ballots November 5, only some 25 million or so are thought to be "in play"—that is, capable of being moved, based on what they read, hear and observe before Election Day As the Democrats see it, the Republicans have no winning issues besides those best left to Whitewater Special Prosecutor Kenneth W Starr Indeed, the Clinton White House has been unable to identify any broad national themes that Dole might hammer away at to score with the voters Significantly, this includes welfare and crime, issues that have served the Republicans well in the past and that they hoped would do so once moie this year Assaults on Dole's plan for big tax cuts are the keystone of the Clinton campaign The idea is to strip the proposal of its credibility and thereby undermine the foundation of its proponent's candidacy Not surprisingly, Dole's record as a conservative budget-balancei has facilitated the task considerably Around his attacks on what he and his surrogates have come to call the Dole "tax scheme," Clinton wraps a package that makes him appear caring and mainstream He takes credit for a strong economy while doing nothing to upset Wall Street He emphasizes family values and the need to protect Medicare He never misses an opportunity—from hurricanes in the East to factional strife in the Middle East—to show he stands above the fray Most of all, he draws a sharp contrast between himself, as' Mr Future,' and an aging Dole, portrayed as an honorable man who is nonetheless hopelessly mired in nostalgia Whatever his private misgivings...

...the strongest card he has left in a weak hand After noting in an Oval Office interview that the words "associated with" the Dole campaign were "sacrifice," "honor," "trust," and "responsibility," CBS News anchor Dan Rather asked the President what words should be linked with his campaign Clinton the Loquacious was, for once, befogged In countering Rather's implicit reproach, he eventually served back his campaign slogans "opportunity," "responsibility" and "concern for all Americans " Such adages may get him through Election Day, but they will hardly meet the test of governance in the four years that follow...

...Dole, against his better instincts, has been prompted to raise the "character issue...

...Dole is stuck with his idea of a tax bonanza for all ranks, especially after inviting his old nemesis, supply-sider Jack Kemp, onto the ticket Dole believes his bet-the-farm, six-year, $548 billion proposal, featuring a 15 per cent across-the-board personal income tax cut, will ultimately overwhelm the incremental, restricted "nanny state" cuts Clinton outlined m his Chicago speech "Sometimes it seems our opponents have a million little plans for how government can dictate to the American people what it thinks is best," Dole said on the stump in St Louis "I have one big plan Give American families back more of their hard-earned money, because we believe that people can run their own lives better than any government bureaucracy ever can or ever will" Because that has not been an easy sell...