THE LIBERAL EMASCULATION
BARNES, FRED
THE LIBERAL EMASCULATION by Fred Barnes THERE’S A DOG THAT HASN’T BARKED during President Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate. It also didn’t bark as his State of the Union address was being...
...And in the run-up to the State of the Union, liberals (except Wellstone) were endlessly tolerant of Clinton’s drift to the right...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...They’re for him, period...
...If he pipes up, Wellstone will be in a distinct minority among liberal Democrats...
...It also didn’t bark as his State of the Union address was being prepared...
...They are forced to make his survival and political health their top and all-consuming priority, lest the Republican right triumph...
...Labor leaders and their congressional allies have also pressured Clinton to hold off on renewing fast-track authority for new free trade agreements...
...Liberals have adopted “a pragmatic view” that nothing should be done to abet a GOP victory in 2000...
...In one sense, conservatives ought to be delighted by Clinton’s emasculation of liberals...
...It means, of course, that he’s free to move rightward and make concessions that were unthinkable a decade ago: ending the welfare entitlement, insisting on a balanced budget...
...But that’s only for now...
...That dog is the liberal wing of the Democratic party...
...In his personal life and in his policies, Clinton corrupts those around him...
...During House impeachment hearings, the farther to the left, the more noisily pro-Clinton the Democrat was, and the same is true in the Senate...
...That means that no liberal except Jesse Jackson is likely to challenge Al Gore, and Jackson’s support is chiefly racial, not ideological...
...Nothing else matters...
...They try not to be demeaning...
...A few weeks later, Hillary Clinton warned of “a vast right-wing conspiracy...
...They’ve restrained any indignation about his personal conduct...
...Though Clinton routinely gives liberalism short shrift, liberals are the party’s most unwavering advocates of keeping him in office, no matter how strong the case for expulsion...
...Yet when Clinton called for using tax credits to help pay for long-term care—in other words, the Republican approach—they didn’t protest...
...Democratic liberals used to care more about the substance than the politics of issues...
...They’ve given up their passions— providing programs for the poor, attacking big LIBERALS HAVE GIVEN UP THEIR POLICY PASSIONS, BECAUSE CLINTON IS THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE AGAINST A CONSERVATIVE TAKEOVER...
...They’re aimed at thwarting conservative efforts to kill federal programs that liberals created and still adore...
...Anyway, Wellstone fears liberals have succumbed to “a kind of maintenance politics” in Washington—that is, politics designed to maintain the Clinton administration...
...It used to be that liberals reflexively opposed increases in Pentagon spending...
...Organized labor has steered the president away from accepting any privatization of the current Social Security program...
...In exchange, the president has tossed them a handful of administration jobs and sought to preserve some (but hardly all) of the creaky old New Deal and Great Society programs and social policies...
...He says there’s been “a sort of closing of the ranks” behind Clinton by liberal groups aligned with the Democratic party...
...This is probably smart politics as Clinton moves to deny Republicans another issue, but that’s my point...
...I’m going to rectify that—soon...
...Okay, it’s true that liberals have some influence on Clinton policymaking...
...But there’s another aspect to the collapse of the liberal wing, and it’s not so pretty...
...We’ve always been at our best when we’re cutting edge,” he says, “when we speak to values of right and wrong, as opposed to issuing a 10- point program...
...How was Clinton able to sell this to liberals...
...business, even fighting for income redistribution...
...After the first two days of the Senate trial, most senators, even Teddy Kennedy, said little...
...Clinton’s allies have many ways of saying he’s tamed the liberal wing...
...Well, maybe...
...The lobby for the health-insurance industry did respond, however, and favorably, calling the proposal “a welcome boost for what most experts consider to be the most pressing financial problem facing the baby boom generation...
...Health care, for example, has always been the issue dearest to the heart of congressional liberals...
...Notably about wrongdoing by the White House...
...They’ve become “hesitant about oppositional politics” inside the party, and Clinton has encouraged their hesitancy...
...It’s party moderates—those closest to Clinton ideologically—who’ve been most alarmed...
...Wellstone says he’d try to raise hell about some Clinton policies now, but the impeachment trial crowds out all other issues...
...One of the few liberals embarrassed by all this is Democratic senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota...
...Liberals are scarcely troubled over whether Clinton committed perjury and obstructed justice...
...But most of the bones Clinton throws to liberals fall in the category of reactionary liberalism...
...By persuading them that he’s the last line of defense against a conservative takeover in Washington...
...He has succeeded in making once seemingly incurable ailments vanish,” writes Jacob Weisberg in the January 17 New York Times Magazine...
...Weisberg recounts a late-night meeting toward the end of 1997 at which Clinton insisted he’s all that stands “in the way of conservative control over the whole apparatus of government...
...And most liberals have taken a vow of silence about the president’s embrace of moderate and conservative policies—most strikingly in early January, when the White House proposed the biggest hike in military spending in more than a decade...
...But a half-dozen liberals rushed to criticize the case against Clinton as repetitive and insubstantial...
...Apr?s Clinton, the conservative deluge...
...The silence [of liberals] is deafening,” he told me...
...In truth, Clinton has turned liberals into political eunuchs...
...My guess is Clinton will accede to partial privatization eventually as the price of achieving Social Security reform...
...We’ve seen this attitude before in Washington, but not since Richard Nixon was president...
...Clinton has permanently moved the Democratic party to the center,” says Don Baer, the ex-communications director at the White House...
...Now they barely respond at all...
...Because of a back operation, Wellstone recently had to drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000...
...He says, “There’s a losing of the fire...
Vol. 4 • January 1999 • No. 18
