Well, William Jefferson Clinton did it again. He was riding high in the polls, and blew a golden opportunity once again to capitalize on that fact. It's always this way with him. He seems to be always obsessed with staying on top of the curve rather than staying ahead of it. Why doesn't he ever risk some of his political capital when the tide is turning his way, instead of coasting? Doesn't he understand that successful leadership means taking advantage of your hot streaks and that the time to take risks is when you're riding high?
What I'm talking about, in case anyone is now utterly confused, is Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole's precipitate rise in the polls over the past week or so. It is obvious to most people, including even the usually unimaginative political pundits, that this is in large part due to Dole's decision to break with the Gingrich Shiites, and lead the government towards a reopening of departments and divisions which were closed for a record-setting three weeks. And what I'm complaining about is the fact that Clinton missed an obvious opportunity to be the first on the block to break the stalemate, rather than let Dole be the grownup.
That obvious opportunity, in case no one has guessed it, was to put on the table a balanced budget using CBO numbers. By that one act, he would have stolen the Republicans' trump issue, and established himself as the statesman putting the country's good ahead of his own party and their ideologues. But by the time he finally did what he should have done last June it was too late. He blew it. Because he made this gesture AFTER Dole broke the logjam, and AFTER the House voted a measure reopening the government in full if Clinton were to submit a budget certified as balanced by the CBO, his decision appears merely to have been because of a) unbearable pressure from a persuasive and conciliatory Dole ominously rising in the polls and b) blackmail from the Speaker's team in the House.
This is a constant problem with this President. He seems not to have grasped that successful leadership means to foresee negotiating logjams down the road and pre-empt them. He made the same mistake in the health care debate. When it became obvious not only that his comparatively liberal health reform ideas would not pass intact, but that there were many in Congress who shared his goal of universal health coverage, he should immediately have made common cause with them against the bitter-enders (the single-payer McDermotts and the scorched-earth any-reform-over-my-dead-body Gramms). This would have meant getting together with the Bob Kerreys and the John Chafees (yes, the dirty Republicans, how unthinkable) and fashioning a compromise that would have resulted in a guarantee of universality. It breaks my heart to think of all the missed opportunities of isses that could have easily been negotiated away for the sake of universality and the employer mandate, or even some modification like a combined employer/employee mandate. As a liberal, there are two issues which I would have been more than happy to swallow concessions on: conservatives in the Chafee-Breaux group argued strenuously that malpractice awards were a force driving up health costs just as relentlessly as the cost-shifting involved in the syndrome driving most of our health insurance rates up to compensate for hospitals ministering to the uninsured among us. They were right, and the liberals should have swallowed hard and accepted this. A moderate Republican, Fred Grandy of Iowa, since departed, argued strenuously that many union contracts were ending up with what he termed Cadillac health packages at Ford rates which ended up forcing insurance companies to compensate by overcharging other people in other areas. Well, I am just such a union worker myself, and the Democrats, instead of reacting like scalded cats, should have bothered to talk to union rank-and- filers like myself. I bet they would have found that we, as people painfully aware of how health coverage has replaced wages as the major stumbling block to successful collective bargaining these days, would have been more than willing to make a small sacrifice, if it meant that our health coverage would have been guaranteed and removed as an impediment to contract talks the nation over.
But of course Clinton did not get together with the liberal-moderates and the moderates who dearly wanted universality, and were trying to chart a realistic path to that goal. He fumbled the ball, he destroyed his chance at making history, not only blew it as a leader, but drew the melancholy distinction of being the first President since Truman to blow his party's control in BOTH houses of Congress.
It is at times like these that Mike Dukakis' admonition that this is not a question of ideology but competence seems particularly apt. You see, my liberal friends are aghast at my dislike of Clinton (whose good intentions and ideology I have no problems with, by the way). "What is your problem?" they say. "We've had conservative or moderate conservative Presidents since at least Richard Nixon. This is what we've wanted since Gene McCarthy lost the Democratic nomination to Hubert ("I am now a hawk. Amen") Humphrey. Stop rocking the boat. What are you complaining about?"
Well, my dear liberal friends, I am complaining about, yes, as Dukakis would say, incompetence. I am complaining about a liberal President who at the time he introduced his health reform plan enjoyed overwhelming public approval, approval which only soared further after the initial introduction of his call for universal coverage, yet who managed to squander all that good will and popularity due to inept, uninspiring, unimaginative leadership. I'm talking about a President who, while no doubt having some liberal instincts, managed in general to set back the cause of liberalism in this country dramatically, at least temporarily. So, to parody a famous saying, what shall it profit a liberal to gain a President if by so doing he loseth his country's mandate? I am not persuaded by the argument that I don't know when I have it good. I still believe, despite the '94 election (one in which only 17% of the country voted for the winners), that this country is moving out of a dark night of right-wing reactionism. Remember, it was not so long ago that it was risky to take a pro-choice position. Now, even the conservative Republican party is split down the middle on this issue. Remember, it was not so long ago that an arch-conservative named Ronald Reagan won not only election but re-election in this country, and his disastrous record of defense sprees and criminal tax cut debt will, I am sure, eventually earn him the appropriate place of infamy in our history books. Yet now, we have a liberal Democratic President, and moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Arlen Specter are in the Republican presidential fray. Yes, my liberal friends, much as you may cower and coast (like Clinton), the fact remains that we can do better. And we SHOULD do better.
And this is why in the end I continue to be opposed to Bill Clinton's re-election. This is why I continue to look forlornly across the landscape for a progressive leader, who, while perhaps not such a consistent liberal as Clinton, at least will have the imagination and smarts to accomplish, a la pragmatist Roosevelt, more than the politely (and timidly) liberal Clinton. This is why I continue to hope for a Bradley or a Weicker to come out of the woodwork and fire the public's imagination. This is why I also continue to call for real political reform, reform that will mend the people's hearts and rekindle their faith. For if we cannot change our liberal leadership, if we are stuck with Clinton as the sole representative of progressivism, then perhaps we can change our followership instead, by cleaning up our political act, and thus restoring to our leadership in general, and to a re-elected Bill Clinton in particular, the trust of the people. For then, and only then, will leadership pointing us in the direction of true health reform, peace in the world through international cooperation, and responsible capitalism, be given any kind of a chance for success in the hearts and minds of our embittered and betrayed public.
But of course Bill Clinton refuses to engage publicly on the issue of political reform. So we are right back where we started, with progressives seeing their mandate of '92 being frittered away, yet apparently with no one else on the horizon willing to launch a politically realistic independent centrist candidacy; so they most likely will wind up marching like lemmings off the cliff of the incompetent left, as Senator Specter so aptly phrased it.
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