Clinton’s Mission: In (Some) Government We Trust

Bill Clinton has been running for office his entire life. He’s always done what he needs to do to get reelected. Now, for the first time in his life, he can’t get reelected. He has to face a bigger challenge: his legacy. What are his options?

He could advance the Democratic Party’s agenda. That means expanding the safety net. Clinton tried to do that with health-care reform. It didn’t work. There’s not enough money--and more important, not enough confidence in government--to create big, new programs.

But he may be able to advance the Democratic agenda in small ways. If he can’t guarantee health care for all Americans, how about all children? “We can’t rest until the people who are shut out of the health-care system, especially children of poor working people, have access,” he said Tuesday.

Another option is to secure the safety net. That means reforming Medicare and Social Security to make sure they don’t run out of money. Entitlement reform would preserve the Democratic legacy. But it won’t create a Clinton legacy. Social Security is Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy from the 1930s. Medicare is Lyndon B. Johnson’s legacy from the 1960s.

Moreover, entitlement reform requires tough choices--the kind Clinton has avoided. Is he willing to make them now? Maybe he is.

Republicans were impressed last week when the president proposed $138 billion in Medicare savings over the next six years as his opening bid for a balanced-budget deal. That meant he was willing to split the difference with the GOP and end the stalemate that produced last year’s bitter government shutdown.

Congressional Democrats were dispirited. Medicare cuts were their best weapon against the GOP last year. Now their own president is willing to meet the GOP half way. And for what? To get a balanced-budget deal? Democrats do not become heroes by balancing the budget.

But Clinton may have a bigger plan. A balanced-budget deal would make a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution far less urgent. A lot of Democrats, including the president, believe the party has a far larger interest in blocking the amendment.

On Tuesday, Clinton told the Democratic National Committee that balancing the budget “is a very liberal thing to do.” It would allow Democrats to get off the defensive. They’ll be able to talk about human needs, not just fiscal priorities. The last GOP Congress tried to use balancing the budget to justify big cuts in social programs. If Clinton balances the budget, he will take that issue away from them.

He also wants to keep Democrats competitive by keeping the party in the center. Clinton’s done that for the last two years, and it’s worked. The most important legislative achievement of his first term was welfare reform. Will balancing the budget be the most important legislative achievement of his second term?

If so, Clinton should not expect the thanks of a grateful party. Last year, welfare reform split Democrats right down the middle. In the House, 98 Democrats voted in favor of welfare reform and 98 voted against it. Twenty-three Democratic senators voted in favor and 23 voted against. You can’t ask for a sharper split.

The same thing could happen on a balanced-budget deal. Congressional Democrats were outraged when Clinton decided to offer his own balanced-budget proposal in June 1995. That decision marked the onset of Clinton’s political strategy of “triangulation.” The strategy worked--for Clinton. But it didn’t help congressional Democrats--they’re still in the minority. For many Democrats, triangulation means strangulation. Congressional Democrats know the president triangulated himself away from them.

As long as Clinton is successful and popular, however, Democrats will suppress their differences with him. Just as they did last year over welfare reform. But if Clinton gets into trouble--say, a recession or a damaging ethics development--Democrats may not come to his rescue the way Republicans did with Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Gingrich has a solid base among true-believers in the GOP. If Clinton falters, true-believing Democrats may say, “We never liked him much, anyway.”

Yet another option is for Clinton to become a world statesman. That’s what second-term presidents typically do to secure their place in history. The president may have been signaling that intention when he said in his inaugural address, “America stands alone as the world’s indispensable nation . . . . The world’s greatest democracy will lead a whole world of democracies.”

Question: Lead them against what? Previous presidents rallied Americans to stand up to an international threat: the evil empire, Saddam Hussein. But what is Clinton saving the world from? Itself?

In any case, an activist foreign policy, like an activist domestic policy, requires hard choices. The one thing that stood out in Clinton’s speech was his failure to talk about tough choices. Instead, it was filled with anodyne statements like, “The promise we sought in a new land, we will find again in a land of New Promise.” Or, “Nothing big ever came from being small.” That’s about as challenging as Barney the Dinosaur.

The speech did offer some clues to how the president is thinking about his legacy. In January 1981, Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” On Monday, Clinton gave his response: “Today we can declare: Government is not the problem. Government is not the solution.” So what role is there for government? “We need a new government for a new century, a government humble enough not to try to solve all our problems for us, but strong enough to give us the tools to solve our problems for ourselves.”

The president made a bold claim: “We have resolved for our time a great debate over the role of government.” The next day, he told the Democratic National Committee, “I was curious to see how people commented about that.”

Clinton used his address to define his legacy: to restore trust in government. To convince a cynical electorate that government can work. The biggest single trend in U.S. politics for the last 30 years has been the loss of confidence in government. Clinton has made it his project to reverse that trend.

The president cited examples to remind people that, yes, government can work. It’s working now. “Problems that once seemed destined to deepen now bend to our efforts. Our streets are safer, and record numbers of people have moved from welfare to work.”

Speaking to a partisan audience on Tuesday, Clinton claimed he got a mandate in November: “We ended the notion that government is the problem. It was very powerful rhetorically, but the American people never knew what it meant until the other party won Congress and had the government shut down twice. But make no mistake: Our view prevailed.”

He’s claiming he has a mandate to reverse the Reagan revolution. How can he do that? After all, the GOP kept Congress. They would argue Clinton won, not because he rejected Reagan’s philosophy, but because he stole it.

Clinton begs to differ. What he stole from Reagan is the notion that big government doesn’t work. But small government--government that “does more with less”--is another story.

Clinton’s rejection of what he denounced on Monday as “petty bickering and extreme partisanship” is essential to his legacy. When people are asked why government doesn’t work, they answer, “Because there’s too much politics.” Politics means influence-peddling and partisan warfare. Most Americans believe politics is the enemy of problem-solving. That’s why they’re always looking for a non-politician to save them--Ross Perot in 1992, Colin L. Powell in 1996.

Clinton is the most accomplished professional politician of our time. He is determined to prove that an accomplished professional politician can make government work. Then voters don’t have to long for an outsider to make it work.

“We hear a lot in America about the cynicism that exists between the public and the politicians,” Clinton said Tuesday. “But we can make it better if we will suspend our cynicism and instead put our energies into getting something done for America.” By convincing Americans that he can make government work, Clinton wants to do more than end the Reagan revolution. He wants to reverse the tide of cynicism that has engulfed American politics.

Now, that would be quite a legacy.