Kindred Fates: The Clinton, Nixon Cases

WASHINGTON —  Although President Bill Clinton has three years yet to serve, obituaries are already being penned for an administration that seems comatose. In recent interviews, the president himself often appears detached, concerned more about past accomplishments and future retirement plans than on anything he might yet do in office. How will historians see the Clinton presidency? The president likes to compare himself to Theodore Roosevelt. Others have suggested Lyndon B. Johnson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Grover Cleveland. But perhaps the best comparison is Richard M. Nixon.

Ideologues of the right, of course, have long peddled this notion. They love to compare Whitewater to Watergate, Clinton’s campaign-finance scandals to Nixon’s. They fantasize about impeachment, cavil about more special prosecutors. But that is mostly drivel. As conservative Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr has discovered to his dismay, there is no comparison between Nixon’s abuse of power in the Oval Office and whatever deals Clinton winked at while governor of Arkansas. The real comparison of Clinton and Nixon isn’t about scandal, but fate.

It was Nixon’s fate to be a Republican president at the end of an era of Cold War liberalism. Clinton is a Democratic president constrained by the limits of a conservative time. Both men, devoted far more to winning than to any principle, rode the prevailing currents, oblivious to the sea change taking place around them.

When Nixon was elected, the political passion was mobilized on the left--the anti-war, civil-rights, feminist, environmental, consumer, gay-rights movements were on the march. Congress was dominated by liberal initiative, if not a liberal majority. Nixon had little but contempt for the Great Society, but ended up, in many ways, the last liberal president.

He signed off on major extensions of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Poverty programs rose by 50% during his administration. He created the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, extended the Voting Rights Act, increased spending on the National Endowment for the Arts. By executive order, he mandated affirmative action in employment. He proposed a comprehensive national health-care plan. To replace welfare, he proposed a guaranteed annual income for all Americans, working or not working. As Vietnam wound down, he accepted deep cuts in the military budget to help pay for domestic programs.

Even in foreign policy, Nixon, the unregenerate cold warrior, infuriated conservatives by pushing detente and arms control, and recognizing China. He was, concluded Garry Wills in his brilliant study “Nixon Agonistes,” “the authentic voice of surviving American liberalism.”

Clinton has governed at the end of the conservative era. When he was elected, conservative movements were on the march. Congress was dominated by a conservative, soon-to-be GOP majority. Skepticism about government was at its high tide. Clinton had little but contempt for the right, but ended up earning House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s snide compliment as the “best Republican candidate that Democrats ever nominated.”

Clinton’s first budget scrapped his investment agenda to bring the deficit down. Then he embraced the conservative shibboleth of balancing the budget while cutting taxes. Poverty programs suffered the deepest cuts. Clinton trumpeted conservative imagery--”three strikes” sentencing, death penalties, school uniforms, teen curfews, the V-chip. Despite the breakup of the Soviet Union, he sustained military budgets at virtual Cold War levels (higher in comparable dollars than those of Nixon). He signed off on a punitive repeal of welfare, ending the federal commitment for support for poor mothers and children.

Ironically, both men, known for their political sagacity, bought into an era just as it was going bankrupt. Nixon proclaimed, “We are all Keynesians now,” even as Keynes’ Bretton Woods system was collapsing, unable to meet the challenge of stagnation and global restructuring. When Nixon was forced to sever the link between the dollar and gold, the conservative era of deregulation began. Clinton announced, “the era of big government is over,” even as people were looking for help in staying afloat in the treacherous currents of the new economy. Conservative bromides--balanced budgets, free trade, tight money--fail to redress the reality of stagnant wages and increasing insecurity in the global market that now exists.

Clinton’s defeat on “fast track” trade legislation at the height of the recovery probably marks the turn against the conservative era of de-regulation and corporate license. In the 1970s, the energy crisis shattered the Keynesian claim to be “fine-tuning” the economy. Today, the Asian collapse shatters the conservative complacency about free markets.

Like Nixon, Clinton is a self-made man, with a ruthless desire to win. Perhaps that explains why both were plagued by scandal, though neither was personally corrupt. Like Nixon, Clinton is nothing if not flexible, driven by an animal instinct for political survival more than any ideological principle. Both changed political garb to fit the season. No wonder both were seen as treacherous by right and left at the same time.

The measure of both men is whether they contributed in forging a new consensus. Nixon surely did. He defined the issues--crime, race, American power--that became staples of the conservative era. He defined the constituency--the silent majority, “the forgotten American”--that became the centerpiece of the Reagan coalition. He provided the strategy--a politics of racial and cultural baiting--that enabled the Republican Party to triumph as the party of white refuge in the South. Detente obscured his message somewhat. His own high crimes and misdemeanors forestalled the Republican victory. But he provided much of the script that Reagan enacted.

Clinton arguably has tried to do the same. Liberals like former New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo say he has helped inoculate Democrats on social issues--crime, morality, welfare, budget balancing. He has framed issues--education, health care, the environment, choice--that sow division in the GOP coalition. He has identified constituencies--suburban women, Latinos and low-income voters--vital to a new majority. He has pushed a strategy--a politics aimed at the suburbs--that fit the changing times. In his campaigns, he has run on a populist, kitchen table, pay-check economic message--standing up for education, Social Security and Medicare, pushing for national health care--that provides a frame for a new reform majority.

The president’s conservative governance has obscured this message. The scandals and corruption around him cost the party a majority in the Congress. But if his successors pay attention to how he has run, rather than how he has governed, they may find a road-map for a progressive majority.

There is one major difference. Nixon, and the people around him, consciously sought to build the conservative movement, and to divide Democrats over cultural and social issues--race, abortion, cultural license. He helped build the GOP base while in office, even though the Republican Party suffered in the wake of Watergate. Clinton, on the other hand, seems divorced from, even antagonistic to, the activist base of his party, from unions to civil-rights groups. He seems content to govern from the center, legitimizing the Republican right that he could isolate as extremists. The Democratic Party has suffered devastating reverses during the Clinton years.

Clinton’s zest for people and pressing the flesh is a stark contrast to Nixon’s brooding insecurities. But it is striking that these two career politicians of consummate political flexibility embraced the conventional wisdom of their time at the very moment the world was rendering it obsolescent. Each marked the end of an era. It remained for others to lead the way into the new.