The reaction from the Clinton camp was a collective shrug. The press, it was assumed (correctly), would play the speech as nothing new or worse-Bush’s suggestion that a 1 percent tax cut might be possible if his programs were enacted seemed more of the same old cynical, patronizing gamesmanship that is the signature of his “campaign mode.” That the Detroit address came a day after the president repromised never “ever, ever” to raise taxes again (and several hours after Marlin Fitzwater retracted that nonpledge) made it even more difficult to take seriously.
And yet, the Bush speech served to illuminate the rather defensive, pinched, tactical nature of the Clinton campaign in recent weeks. The obvious political virtuosity of the operation, which has successfully fended off the expected GOP sludgeathon (so far), seems to have had spiritual consequences: the campaign lacks the sense of civic passion, the feeling of public mission that has marked the great Democratic candidacies of the 20th century. It feels synthetic, too carefully focus-grouped; there are no major positions that cause discomfort to any of the likely target constituencies; there are no matters of conscience-points of personal privilege-for which the candidate would seem willing to lose votes. He is, quite clearly, a compassionate man who-unlike most politicians-actually seems to enjoy people, but there is no rough edge, no humanizing eccentricity to him. His recent efforts have been rhetorically flaccid, intellectually unadventurous, morally undemanding, informed by a caution that seems almost Republican in spirit (if not philosophy)-take no chances, do no harm, run out the clock. “The way to the goal line is to keep running offtackle,” says James Carville, Clinton’s intermittently colorful Cajun strategist, lapsing into Young Republican sports metaphor. “Four yards and a cloud of dust.”
Carville is, at least, candid. Other Clintonites were trying to sell the notion that last week’s tepid gambit, a repackaging of familiar programs and rhetoric, was an attempt to re-establish the candidate as a “new” sort of Democrat (i.e., not just “tax and spend”) who cared about stimulating private enterprise and kicking deadbeats off welfare, a communitarian who emphasized the responsibilities as well as the rights of citizenship. These are all themes from Clinton’s past-and there is good sense in reintroducing programs like welfare reform and national service to the general electorate-but last week they seemed more a tactic than a way of life, a reaction to the previous week’s criticism that the campaign was too obsessed with responding to the GOP attack machine and not positive enough.
In truth, Bill Clinton hasn’t made a serious, sustained effort since his acceptance speech (remember the New Covenant?) to distinguish his Democratic party, the gubernatorial Democrats, from the legislators and lobbyists, rodents and reptiles who populate the party’s Washington wing-and who provide George Bush with the fuel for his most credible scenarios of the havoc a Democratic White House might wreak. There is a difference between the two, or used to be: Clinton was part of a generation of governors who were forced into fresh thinking by federal cutbacks in the 1980s and “reinvented” their states, finding creative ways to run better programs with less money. The group was celebrated by David Osborne in a 1988 book, “Laboratories of Democracy.” Clinton was a ringleader and a cheerleader-he can describe his peers’ policy initiatives in mind-numbing detail, and he still keeps up with them by phone. No doubt, governors and former governors like Richard Riley (South Carolina), Bruce Babbitt (Arizona), Roy Romer (Colorado) and Jim Blanchard (Michigan) would play prominent roles in a Clinton administration–but they haven’t had much presence in his presidential campaign.
“Most of us are busy running our states or getting on with our lives,” says one of those who were featured with Clinton in Osborne’s book, “so it’s hard to get involved with the campaign on a daily basis. But it is a little disappointing to see our entrepreneurial message, which can elect a governor in Wyoming or Montana, get filtered through and diluted by the Washington folks Bill has running his campaign. They don’t seem to understand what he’s about. They don’t understand that his ideas are more important than his ability to react instantly every time Bush attacks.”
It’s the “Washington folks,” of course, who have the ultimate counterargument: look who’s winning. Clinton is the UnBush. He represents change. He doesn’t have to get fancy, or high-minded, or spiritual. He just has to avoid screwing up, to “stay disciplined” (the staff was horrified when Clinton got tetchy–a rare outburst of human frailty-in response to persistent questions about his Vietnam-draft story last week). “This has become a meat-and-potato election,” says Stan Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster. “There is so much fear and despair out there. People are looking for practical ideas about how to get the economy moving again. They’re not interested in hearing about much else. It’s a lot like New Hampshire.”
New Hampshire was where Clinton transformed himself from governor to candidate. He did this by stripping away the high-minded half of his message-the part that emphasized individual responsibility, the inability of government to solve every problem, the service and sacrifices necessary to re-create an American sense of community. Instead, he concentrated on the easy stuff, the economic populism–soaking the rich, promising new “investments” in people. It was what “worked” in focus groups. And there was also, to be fair, a certain rough justice to it. “How can we ask people who played by the rules for the last 12 years and are now scared to death of losing their jobs and homes to sacrifice?” a prickly Clinton staffer said at the time. “Better yet, why should we?”
But without the discipline of his full message, Clinton seemed to lose his soul. Under pressure-and the pressure was relentless, especially after Gennifer Flowers became a household name-his New Hampshire campaign unraveled into irresponsible railing against the congressional pay raise and the (equally irresponsible) promise of middle-class tax cut. In Florida, fearing Tsongas, he responded to Pious Paul’s mild efforts to be responsible about entitlements with shameless social-security fearmongering (revived against Bush two weeks ago). In New York, he acceded to the premise, self-righteously trafficked by a low-wattage battery of mayors, that the federal government was primarily responsible for all urban woes. All of the above–with the possible exception of the middleclass tax cut–represented retreats from positions he had taken in his more complicated life precandidacy. The best that can be said of his performance in the primaries is that he survived. Not being George Bush, he has prospered since.
Not being George Bush may prove sufficient to win, but Clinton hasn’t yet closed the sale-and the doubts that remain about him aren’t the sort that can be elicited in focus groups. They concern his ability to lead. Focus groups are followed, not led; they tell a candidate how to please his constituencies, not how to inspire them. But beneath the fear and despair that Stan Greenberg can measure, there is an understanding–Greenberg readily admits it exists-that any politician who tells people what they want to hear isn’t quite telling them the truth this year. Bush, tone-deaf and hapless, sins by commission: he insults the public by saying he’ll lower taxes, which few believe and a plurality, according to the NEWSWEEK Poll, think may not be a very good idea in any case. Clinton’s sins are subtler, of omission. He hasn’t yet summoned the courage to tell them what they need to know.
The best I saw Clinton this year was early on, before the pressure caused him to wilt into a traditional Democrat. He would challenge his audiences, especially schoolchildren. At Winnisquam High School last October, he told the kids-right up front-that the average Korean their age had two years more education than they had (because of longer school years), “which means, if you don’t think you’re somehow superior-and if you do, you’re wrong-you’re going to have to work harder to catch up. “He told the kids how he’d give them the opportunity to catch up-the apprenticeship and college-scholarship programs that have since become his signature-but warned them that if they didn’t seize this opportunity, “you run the risk of not living as well as your parents have … and you know better than I how hard it is for them.”
He challenged older audiences as well, to be more active, compassionate, tolerant–especially, and most passionately, across racial lines. He proposed inclusion as the most traditional American value; he despaired that the nation had succumbed too easily to the seduction of division. He raised the possibility of a revived, Kennedyesque (“Ask not what your country can do for you. . . “) spirit of public altruism. “I desperately want to be your president,” he (rather candidly) told a rapt audience in South Carolina one night, “but you have to be Americans again.”
He is less eloquent now. Even his attempt at Notre Dame last Friday to recapture the high ground with a speech on tolerance and service seemed more programmed than passionate-more a tactical “response” to the Pat Buchanan Republicans than a challenge to his young audience (and one wonders if the themes will be sustained and carried into lunch-bucket precincts, or relegated to the occasional college appearance). In 1960, by contrast, Theodore H. White saw John F. Kennedy reach a new level of eloquence as the campaign neared the end: “His voice grew stronger and slower … and, as his manner of delivery grew slower, his public language grew m e elegant. “Kennedy had the luxury of calling for sacrifice in flush times; for him, “growth” as a candidate meant a more compelling altruism. Clinton campaigns at a harder, dicier moment. It may be a sadness of our time that what passes for “growth” in a candidate nowadays is a perverse form of diminution, an increased discipline-staying “on message”-rather than the confident, creative expansiveness that is the natural precursor of greatness in office.
NEWSWEEK POLL
Would Bill Clinton handle economic conditions better? CURRENT 10/91 47% Yes 28% 38% No 44% Would the unemployment rate come down faster in a Bush or Clinton administration? 8% Bush 27% Clinton 36% The same 22% Not likely to come down NEWSWEEK Poll, Sept. 10-11, 1992
