Indeed, the most curious aspect of the 1996 campaign is that the Republicans are embarrassed to run on their record: "We told you what we were going to do in 1994, and we did it." All 10 Contract items were voted on by the House of Representatives in the first 100 days--the precise pledge the House GOP candidates had made. The only one of the 10 defeated in the House was term limits, which garnered nearly 90 percent of Republicans in Congress. Many of the Contract measures were so popular that they received a majority of Democratic votes. To be sure, Congress's anti-same-sex marriage act, the flag burning amendment, and that bill to discharge AIDS victims from the military were ugly episodes.
That the GOP Congress has fled from its real accomplishments to embrace these yahoo idiocies in an election year speaks volumes about the Republicans' readiness to govern. This GOP cowardice is a tribute to the success of the "harshness," "extremism," and "meanness" pinned on the Newtoids during their showdown with the president on Medicare. That's why, last November, the Post could feel a "shameless exploitation" coming on. What a rush! And now the third rail of American politics--middle-class entitlements--reemerges intact and once again untouchable.
In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a campaign pledge of a middle-class tax cut, which he said was necessary because median family income had been declining in America, and a national health care reform plan to bring medical insurance to the 37 million Americans lacking it. Neither was delivered. (Median incomes are still falling, and over 40 million Americans are now uninsured. Not a lot of idle chatter about this in Chicago.) Indeed, Clinton lied about one and botched the other. The tax-cut pledge--of 10 percent, with an $800 per-child tax credit, very close to what candidate Dole peddles now--vanished nearly the instant that the electoral college had been decided. Clinton claimed he dropped the idea because the Bush administration's deficit was surprisingly large, and told the public that the tax cut was a casualty of his predecessor's fudging the figures.
This was so outrageous a tale that the president's own deputy director (later director) of the Office of Management and Budget called it a cheap shot. As Bob Woodward tells it in The Agenda, Alice Rivlin confronted Clinton spinster Paul Begala on this very issue. When Begala offered, "We have to explain why the deficit got worse and how it got worse," Rivlin shot back: "That's nonsense. Bill Clinton knew where this deficit was going." Woodward adds that Rivlin said "that they had to face the fact that the campaign fundamentally misrepresented the situation."
Begala did not take the expert analysis of Dr. Rivlin lightly: "Begala was steaming." But the clash between economic fact and political spin in the administration is--well, did you see any of the NBA playoffs last year? It's fun to watch, but there's not a lot of suspense about the final outcome. The press office has taken over full control from the Council of Economic Advisers, and the incredible boasts--unchallenged by Dole or the press--have become nothing short of phenomenal. That Clinton lowered the deficit "four years in a row for the first time since the Civil War" is now the principal economic achievement touted by the administration.
In fact, the Clinton administration has not actually seen four fiscal years; we don't know--won't know for one year, yet--what the four-year Clinton deficit amounts to. The first of the four years that the administration cites in its deficit-reduction grand slam is actually fiscal 1993--which began October 1, 1992--Bush's last year. In fiscal 1993, federal red ink declined from $290 billion (fiscal 1992) to $255 billion and the deficit was headed south. This was primarily due to four factors which have nothing to do with Bill Clinton: The business cycle ticked up (in 1992 the economy was already growing at 2.3 percent annually, just about the rate under Clinton so far); the collapse of the Soviet threat allowed military spending to decline; the savings and loan bailout ended; and the modest spending caps put in place in the infamous Bush budget compromise of 1990 (wherein he broke his "no new taxes" pledge--in exchange for these spending caps) kicked in. Of course, Clinton credits the Bush $492 billion deficit-reduction deal not at all; his 1993 $496 billion package actually undid the spending caps in place in order to rejigger them--directing credit to the new administration.
What is genuinely dastardly about the deficit-reduction boast, however, is that Clinton actually did help to bring government ledgers into balance--by being so legislatively incompetent that the administration's spending schemes were shot down one after the other. In Putting People First, Clinton's 1992 campaign manifesto, he advocated about $90 billion in "investments"--also known as government make-work--over four years. This was a key promise for the Clinton-Gore campaign, as it was the "I have a plan!" backdrop for their commitment to get the "worst economy in 50 years" moving.
The first installment, even pared back to a $16 billion "stimulus package" (not to be confused with Dick Morris's less extravagant, if better targeted, $200 per hour private- sector stimulus package), was filibustered by Dole in the Senate; the "investment" program was nevermore. The fate of the Clinton health plan, a similar budget-busting spending spree, is well known. By producing such colossal political failures on the spending side, Clinton did help further the goal of budget balance.
Indeed, the ultimate political catastrophe of the Clinton administration--its failure to hold Congress in the 1994 elections--finally brought real constraints on the spending side. Remember, please, that the administration was perfectly willing to budget $200 billion annual deficits in 1996 and far beyond--until thwarted by the "extremist" Republican Congress. The result was a decline in the 1996 deficit to only about $120 billion--over $70 billion less than what the administration forecast in February 1995. But let's face it: If Clinton can't steal the credit from this "dangerous" and "radical" set of criminals, whom can he steal from?
The excitement in Chicago was that Clinton had indeed committed the perfect crime. Mario Cuomo, relegated to not-ready-for-primetime status along with the rest of the old- line liberal Politburo (including Jesse Jackson), gave the one speech which actually laid it all out (he even dared to recount Clinton's run at a national health care system!). Rather than simply demonizing his Republican opponents, the ex-governor sought to identify the source of Clinton's contribution, a contribution that needed some explaining in light of the president's signing of the welfare bill and other ostensible dissents from Democratic orthodoxy.
It has been noted that Cuomo's rationale for re-electing the president--i.e., only Clinton can fix a welfare bill which is so terrible that no reasonable person would ever have signed it, unless he had to for raw political advantage--is deliciously cynical. But Cuomo's real insight was in describing what Bill Clinton had done for the Democratic Party. "President Clinton," he said, was "erasing the stigmas that had been branded upon our reputation over the years. Who will say today that Democrats are in love with big government, and big spending, after Bill Clinton has cut the federal government dramatically and brought the deficit down by 60 percent?"
And this new, unburdened Democratic Party can go on to achieve wonders. "The president was lifting the albatross from around the neck of this great Democratic Party so that now with all those stigmas virtually erased, we are free once again to be Democrats, progressive, constructive Democrats. And we are ready now to continue the work of restoring the American dream that was invented by Democrats six decades ago." So the greatness these "new" Democrats want to achieve, flushed with the success of Clinton, is the New Deal. Rejoice, my beloved Party. We are "free once again to be Democrats." Real Democrats--not budget-cutters, not welfare-enders, not pseudo-Republicans--but bona fide "progressive, constructive Democrats." Glory be to Clinton.
As Joe Klein, using his real name, wrote in Newsweek, "The era of big government may be over, but the party of big government remains--and remains stubbornly devoted to a thick, dull, uninspired system that seems to exist for the benefit of its employees, not the public." Klein was specifically talking about public schools and the teachers' unions that love them so jealously that they are quite willing to deny millions of poor children any reasonable means of escape. It was to Bob Dole's credit that he seized on the issue of bureaucratic control of the public schools as a campaign issue of substance and symbolism. It actually does constitute an act of political bravery, for it has already unleashed a firestorm from government operatives posing as teachers, using America's school kids as hostages.
Is Cuomo's vision Bill Clinton's? Is the co-optation of Republican policies just a trick to set up the Democrats for yet another new era of big government? Clinton on the fly could spin it: "I said that the 'era of big government is over.' That was the old era. This is the new era. And it's not big government. It's progressive government. It's constructive government. It's reinvented government. It's an investment in our future. It's government that cares about people." C'mon, you can even hear the hillbilly twang.
Looking forward, it is impossible to predict what a second term President Clinton would do. Take the president's forthright statement, made on 60 Minutes in August: "I pledge that I have no intention of raising taxes in my second term." How perfectly splendid to twist the future tense pledge into the present tense of intent. And still, to make it sound like a firm and intelligible commitment. And, of course, to really believe it. That is the genius of William Jefferson Clinton: He believes everything he tells us. And he tells us everything. The polling data look like a solid endorsement of that genius, but the race is not over. Bob Dole, a grumpy old war horse, is appealing to some Americans as the "anti-Clinton." Dole is not a principled opponent of the status quo, or a dedicated tax cutter, or even an ardent champion of reducing the size of government. But he has been a man of what passes for honor in our government, and it is stunning that both Democrats and Republicans unanimously believe just exactly what they hear from Dole--that is, when they can decipher it into English. Whatever.
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