Clinton Tilts Left
BARNES, FRED
Clinton Tilts Left by Fred Barnes At his Oval Office press conference following the off-year elections, President Clinton cited only a single result as having "national significance." It was the...
...On health care, Clinton hasn't so much adopted a new position as re-emphasized an old one...
...It was the defeat in Houston, 55 percent to 45 percent, of an initiative to ban racial preferences in city contracts and hiring...
...For one thing, he suggested it look into the problem of gangs...
...Nor would he have spoken at the dinner of a national homosexual organization, which he was to do on November 8. Maybe I'm making too much of this, but Clinton mentioned one candidate in his post-election press conference, Jim McGreevey, the Democrat who narrowly lost the New Jersey governor's race...
...The president, Armey insisted, "has never changed goals, only strategies...
...Rather than draw from his conservative side, as he did last year while running for reelection, clinton is now stressing his liberal leanings...
...Insurance companies are afraid federal quality standards will drive up premiums, create more uninsured, and generate new pressure for nationalized health care...
...At the same meeting, however, Vice President Gore echoed Franklin and declared "race is a pervasive if often unacknowledged part of every issue, controversy, indeed conversation in the United States of America...
...The only other thing he could have pointed to was the Des Moines mayoral race going from Republican to Democrat," said a White House aide...
...Bruce Lind-sey, the White House attorney and close Clinton friend, kept in touch with the talks among tobacco companies, plaintiffs' lawyers, and state attorneys general...
...Then he highlights it in his January State of the Union...
...McGreevey," the president said...
...But in emphasis and tone and selection of issues on which to concentrate, he has changed...
...Of course, this is no secret...
...His response is to shore up his party base, which is predominantly liberal...
...Clinton, meeting with the board on September 30, commented, "There is more housing discrimination in America than I had thought when I became president...
...And those who pretend it's not are in danger of deluding themselves...
...And the tilt to the left also seems to fit with Clinton's personal sentiments...
...One reason is he's not as beholden to public opinion now because he doesn't have to run for election again...
...In 1998, he wants more regulations on health insurance, including a patients' bill of rights that a Clinton commission on "quality" health care is drafting...
...The president has shifted his position on tobacco...
...But the president also wants the board to have "a broader debate" on race and not look solely at white racial bias, according to senior aides...
...That's what we've tried to do, a step at a time, until we eventually finish this...
...In fact, the White House privately approved the settlement announced June 20...
...Clinton openly admits it...
...Meanwhile, Clinton is deeply involved with his advisory board on race...
...How could you knowingly damage the education of children and the future of your state for something that will be immensely satisfying for about 30 seconds, maybe an hour, maybe a week at most...
...And even before the polls had closed, they began notifying journalists, including Tim Russert of Meet the Press, that the effort to ban preferences would fail...
...On two other issues—taxes and gays—Clinton hasn't repositioned himself but has changed his rhetoric...
...That's a question Clinton would never have asked last year...
...So, without being asked about it specifically, Clinton brought up the Houston vote, saying he was "profoundly grateful" the people of Houston "voted to retain their affirmative-action program...
...Clinton, taking a more liberal tack now, didn't appreciate the imitation...
...Then the president was pressured by the public-health lobby, Gore, and Donna Shalala, the secretary of health and human services, to take a tougher stand...
...The fixation on Houston reflected the White House's drift to the left in the president's second term...
...The initial steps, he said, were making health insurance portable and expanding taxpayerfunded insurance for kids...
...His actions on health-plan quality follow this pattern to a tee...
...Having failed spectacularly in 1993 and 1994 to achieve national health care, Clinton all but dropped the issue in 1995 and 1996...
...Another is his fear of independent counsel Kenneth Starr and congressional investigations...
...Campaigning for Democrat Don Beyer in the Virginia governor's race on November 4, Clinton characterized those eager to abolish the state's hated car tax as "selfish" and willing to let education funding lag...
...That includes Beyer, who styled himself after Clinton as a New Democrat...
...At the White House, aides monitored the voting in Houston...
...Remarkable...
...Once a racial moderate, the president is now obsessed with preserving most affirmative-action programs...
...Now, he's back with the same goal but a new approach...
...Since the effort to enact a national program in one swoop was a non-starter, he's turned to an aggressive, incremental strategy...
...This has alarmed both insurers and Republicans...
...We've got to do it right so we can go on to the next step and the next step and the next step...
...No, clinton hasn't changed his public position on any issue, or at least not much...
...On September 15, he did, demanding stiffer regulation of tobacco and stronger steps against tobacco companies...
...Yet Clinton, an aide said, "thought he ran a better campaign than a lot of others...
...In a memo to House Republicans on November 3, Majority Leader Dick Armey warned that the president's "new offensive on 'health-plan quality' follows a common Clinton pattern: First he identifies a 'crisis,' usually in the fall before an election year...
...McGreevey's distinguishing political feature was unrepentant liberalism of the left-labor variety...
...Headed by scholar John Hope Franklin, the board has focused chiefly on white racism, which Franklin says is rampant...
...Now that what I tried to do before won't work, maybe we can do it in another way," he told a conference of the Service Employees International Union in September...
...I was surprised and terribly impressed by the remarkable campaign of Mr...
...And then he calls on Congress to send him by Election Day some Kennedy-Blank bill to 'solve' the crisis...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Of course, there wasn't much else the president, as a Democrat, liked in the election results...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 10
