The Other Clinton
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr The Other Clinton At his marathon year-end news conference, where the main concern was still his future policies rather than his alleged paramours,...
...This is basically a division between haves and have-nots...
...In Kyoto the major polluters, starting with the United States with 4 per cent of the world's population and 20 per cent of its greenhouse gases, were disappointed at being unable to persuade the less-polluting countries to accept the idea of buying and trading pollution credits—or licenses to pollute...
...Having asserted in his 1996 State of the Union address—to Republican applause—that "the era of big government is over," Clinton now appears willing to advocate a moderately expanded role for government...
...Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu show no signs of progress in resuming the badly stalled peace process...
...It was expected, however, that in his second term he would follow the example of previous Presidents and concentrate on international matters...
...After Stalin's death in 1953, bitter ideological battles broke out when Soviet reformers like Georgi M. Malenkov and Nikita S. Khrushchev, laying the groundwork for disarmament and coexistence, took the position that the USSR could be destroyed in a nuclear war...
...It cannot mean much in the wide expanses of Africa and Asia, where people struggle for a minimal level of subsistence and pin their hopes on economic development...
...It isn't hard to figure out why, to date, this President has not done so...
...That may not seem surprising, since Clinton's first words as President-elect in 1992 virtually were thathe would focus "like a laser beam" on the domestic economy...
...Of course, what will happen to welfare recipients when the bloom is off the economic rose remains to be seen...
...Getting welfare recipients into jobs has been held back by a shortage of suitable work...
...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr The Other Clinton At his marathon year-end news conference, where the main concern was still his future policies rather than his alleged paramours, President Bill Clinton bridled when a reporter suggested he was becoming a golf-playing lame duck...
...Now, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright barnstorms around Africa, selling human rights in countries left without viable governments to control ethnic slaughter...
...Thus unlike Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who in their second terms turned with relief to foreign travel and summits, President Clinton has turned with relief to repairing the social fabric of America...
...joined Britain, China, Russia, and France in a pledge not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries...
...That was when the word "brinksmanship," associated with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, was born...
...Washington is sending the states $3 billion more than it would have under the old system, and even in the least-generous of them spending per case is up 20 per cent...
...more money for education...
...The President may be looking to his legacy...
...Haves and Have-nots Our political lexicon has trouble keeping up with the tides of history...
...During the half century of the Cold War, the Third World provided arenas for proxy East-West ideological conflict...
...from Ethiopia to Nicaragua, from Angola to Vietnam...
...In Hawaii it has gone up 15 per cent...
...Saddam Hussein of Iraq has backed Clinton into a corner, flouting weapons inspection requirements and defy ing him to use force over the opposition of most allies and friends in the United Nations...
...Iran's President Mohammad Khatami has issued flirtatious invitations to dance, raising questions of what to do about Congressionally-imposed sanctions on Iran that extend to third parties...
...food stamps for legal immigrants...
...and higher cigarette taxes to pay for social programs...
...For another, some of the foreign policy problems are all but intractable...
...The President saved forhis return to Washington theannouncement of a balanced budget...
...The Clinton directive also deals with the new threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of so-called "rogue states...
...In 1946, when the U.S...
...When Clinton announced plans to have U.S...
...That kind of language may resonate among American and European environmentalists...
...Answer: False...
...Foreignpolicy issues, meanwhile, have largely been relegated to the back burner...
...If Kyoto showed anything, it was that the advanced countries have a price to pay for all those years when their East-West fixation left them insufficiently attentive to the gap between North and South...
...That, in effect, contradicted the Reagan directive of 1981, requiring that U.S...
...Nor are children sleeping on heating grates, as prophesied by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.-N.Y...
...Testily, he retorted that his State of the Union address would show "we intend to have a very, very active time" in 1998...
...Chances are he is also looking to bolster the Left flank of Vice President Al Gore in preparation for a primary fight against House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, or any other old Democratic challengers lurking in the underbrush...
...In time of peace, prepare for war," goes the old dictum...
...But in 1995 the U.S...
...Liberal poverty expert Robert Greenstein says that has not developed, at least not yet...
...States have made big investments in child care...
...True or False...
...more money for biomedical research...
...enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, Soviet Prime Minister Joseph Stalin said, "Atomic bombs are meant to frighten those with weak nerves, but they cannot decide the outcome of war...
...A Nuclear Directive New post-Cold War guidelines for the targeting of American nuclear weapons were issued last November in a Presidential Decision Directive...
...forces must prevail even under the conditions of a long war...
...The number of necessary warheads and their targeting, though, continue to rest on the fear of a protracted nuclear exchange that would leave each country a wasteland...
...Mutually Assured Destruction has been the general assumption among military planners on both sides...
...The disappearance of the East-West axis has brought into better focus the neglected reality of the North-South axis...
...The Washington Post, which broke the story, said the document was at least a year in preparation by the White House, the State and Defense Departments, and the CIA...
...Nevertheless, it is clear that the four-page document reflects a shift of emphasis from planning for a nuclear war to deterrence of a nuclear war...
...Answer: False...
...Federal per capita spending has actually gone up, because grants to the states are based on earlier, larger numbers of welfare clients...
...These included Medicare benefits for younger retirees...
...There is a critical lack of child care for people getting off welfare...
...Answer: False...
...The number of families on welfare is down in every state...
...In August 1996, amid rosy predictions of a new era of workfare and dire warnings of untold suffering, Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Bill...
...reform of child care...
...A comprehensive report by Jason DeParle of the New York Times suggests that, although it is too early for definite conclusions, there have been some surprises...
...We have reached a fundamentally new stage in the development of human civilization requiring a better understanding of our connections to God's earth and to each other," said Vice President Gore in his flowery speech...
...The Eisenhower Administration, responding to Soviet superiority in conventional forces in Europe, announced that a conventional attack might trigger a nuclear response...
...States are competing in reducing benefits...
...Welfare spending by the Federal government and the states has gone down...
...It has taken 12 years since the Geneva summit to produce a Presidential Decision Directive that permits arms reductions and retargeting based on the premise of the unwinnable nuclear war...
...Moreover, many parents prefer to leave their children with relatives and friends...
...tax credits to encourage small business pensions...
...But there are no longer three worlds...
...In Kyoto, Japan, the advanced countries tried in vain to bring along the "Third World" in a plan to control global warming...
...Answer: False...
...For one thing, the prospect of a balanced budget presented unexpected opportunities to pursue neglected social goals...
...How has ending welfare as we know it been doing...
...Then, as he played golf over the New Year's weekend in the Virgin Islands, Clinton's staff back at the White House churned out—in leaks and briefings—a blizzard of headline-catching new initiatives...
...There remains a division between developed countries, led by the United States, the European Community and Japan, and the less-developed countries, led by India, China and Brazil...
...Answer: False...
...So there is no severe scarcity at present, although quality of care is a problem...
...That issue arose during the Gulf War when President George Bush wrote Saddam Hussein implicitly threatening a nuclear response to any use of chemical or biological weapons against American forces...
...The Communist "Second World" has dissolved...
...It is as though the New Democrat, who slashed spending and abolished "welfare as we know it," has decided to reapply for membership in the Old Democratic Party that worries about poor children, senior citizens and immigrants...
...The welfare rolls have gone down for the first time...
...a bipartisan push to stabilize Social Security...
...Answer: False...
...The rolls have been shrinking steadily since they peaked in 1994, but the decrease has been accelerating—going from 7 per cent in '95 to 11 per cent in '96 to an annual rate of 18 per cent in the first half of '97...
...About half of those leaving the rolls have jobs, and no serious job shortage has yet developed...
...Let's try a little true or false quiz...
...And because it establishes the conditions for using nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear state launching chemical or biological attacks...
...The new directive is being very closely held because it deals with sensitive subjects like the nuclear targeting of currently friendly countries such as Russia and China...
...troops stay in Bosnia for the indefinite future, he faced the task of selling that decision to a skeptical Congress...
...What kind of war was a stressful subject for the world's two superpowers from the dawn of the nuclear age...
...Even the President's favorite international theme, the global economy, suffered heavy blows with the financial crunch in Asia and the bailouts that may be needed as far as the eye can see...
...As the Cold War began to wind down, Presidents Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, at their 1985 Geneva summit, agreed that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought...
Vol. 81 • January 1998 • No. 1
