Treaty Defeat Is Just Latest Splash in GOP’s Politics of Well-Poisoning

Assume for a moment that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was sincere when he said he considered the global agreement banning nuclear testing a threat to the national security. Even so, his behavior in scuttling the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last week revealed a man so consumed by partisan interest that he’s lost sight of the national interest.

With his control of the Senate calendar, Lott could have shelved the treaty without a vote, thus avoiding the thunderous international message of rejecting it. Instead, ignoring pleas from President Clinton, Lott allowed a handful of conservatives to force a vote that killed the treaty--damaging American efforts to discourage nuclear proliferation and signaling an ominous retreat from the world. Democrats deserve blame for goading the Republicans toward this abyss. But Lott crossed the line from statesmanship to partisanship with the decision to inter, rather than defer, the treaty.

Apart from occasional praise for bipartisan cooperation from George W. Bush, there’s been hardly any talk in the presidential campaign about the poisonous atmosphere in the capital. But it may be the most pressing problem in politics, far worse than the influence of “special interest” money. Atlanta used to style itself the city that was too busy working to hate. Washington has become the city too busy hating to work.

Few congressional sessions have ever produced such utter futility. Nine months after convening, Congress’ major accomplishment is that it is only two months from adjournment. Last week the capital continued to grind down toward total immobilization. The nadir came on Wednesday with the Senate vote to kill the test ban treaty--the first Senate rejection of a major international treaty since it blocked American participation in the League of Nations 79 years ago. Fresh from the test ban debacle, the Senate began the annual rite of strangling campaign finance reform through filibuster. In the meantime, House and Senate conferees completing banking reform legislation included provisions to weaken the community lending law, a move that drew an immediate veto threat from Clinton. And, for good measure, GOP leaders announced they were abandoning efforts to reach an agreement with the administration to restructure Medicare or add to it a prescription drug benefit.

The outlook elsewhere is equally bleak. Legislation to impose new controls on handguns--most important, a required background check of buyers at gun shows--has passed both chambers. But, with many Republicans dubious, it’s unlikely to emerge from the House-Senate conference in a form that Clinton can sign, if it ever emerges at all. The prospects may be slightly better for the “patients’ bill of rights,” giving more protections to Americans in managed health care plans, but it too faces a long climb. Republicans have buried Clinton’s top educational priorities; he’s committed to blocking theirs. Meanwhile, Congress and the White House are approaching another collision over the appropriations bills required to keep the government running and feuding over Senate inaction on Clinton’s judicial nominees.

Part of the problem is that Clinton has lost flexibility to deal with the Republican majority. (His own heightened partisanship crackled through last Thursday’s press conference.) After relying on Democrats--especially liberal Democrats--to protect him from impeachment, he has less freedom to make policy agreements they don’t like. He also has to think twice about reaching agreements that undercut the Democratic plan (especially in the House) to run in the 2000 election by branding this a “do-nothing” Congress. With Vice President Al Gore depending on the support of core party constituencies, such as organized labor, to repel Bill Bradley’s challenge, Clinton is even less likely to pursue bipartisan deals that roil the liberal base.

But congressional Republicans have shown no inclination to press that fault line by offering reasonable compromises to Clinton. Instead, they appear determined to run out the clock on his presidency. “If they had their druthers,” says Marshall Wittmann of the conservative Heritage Foundation, “many in Congress would just hit the fast-forward button to the inauguration of the next president.”

Personal distrust of Clinton--seeded during the 1995 budget battle and brought to full flower after he lied to the country about his relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky--helps explain that attitude among Republicans. But GOP leaders have also been scarred by the conservative backlash against both the 1997 balanced-budget deal and last year’s agreement over appropriations. The reality is that many grass-roots conservatives consider any agreement with Clinton an act of betrayal because they view his presidency as morally illegitimate. GOP leaders have grown steadily less willing to challenge that sentiment, partly because some of them seem to share it themselves.

Republicans are also waiting for 2000, when they hope the election will give them unified control of Congress and the White House and a free hand to implement their agenda without conceding anything to Democrats. In light of Bush’s lead in early general election polls, it’s entirely possible that Republicans will win unified control. But it’s much less likely that the result will be a free hand. Given the underlying partisan balance in the electorate, it’s hard to see either party now winning a commanding majority in the House; and with Republicans defending more Senate seats than the Democrats next year, the GOP has little chance of gaining the five seats it needs for a filibuster-proof majority.

This means that after the next election the two parties will probably still face an environment where they must compromise to advance their goals. Without a basic change in attitude, the next Congress could be as dysfunctional as this one.

For 25 of the past 31 years, Americans have split control of the White House and Congress between the two parties. At its best--as in the 1997 budget deal--divided control serves the country by forcing each party to moderate the other. But the desolate months in Washington since that 1997 agreement show how easy it is for divided government to drift into stalemate as a way of life. Forget all the policy proposals now proliferating in the presidential campaign. When the political hostilities derail even a treaty to slow the arms race, it’s clear that the next president’s first task will be digging out from this crater of animosity.

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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.

See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein