Consequences of the Clinton Victory: Essays on the First Year Edited by Peter W. Schramm

In Britain as in the United States, the keynote assessments of Clinton's first year is uncertainty. There is uncertainty, first of all, about what the Clinton administration intends to accomplish. There is uncertainty about what it has managed to accomplish. And there is uncertainty about what it should accomplish. Part of this unusual degree of uncertainty surrounding the Clinton administration is attributable to the fact that the post-cold war world is proving to be a less predictable era than many had imagined or hoped a few years ago. Part of it must also be attributed to the hesitations and ambivalence of Clinton himself and of his associates: in domestic policy, are they new Democrats, or just updated New Deal Democrats? And do they or do they not have an intelligible foreign policy? Abroad, this latter question naturally figures more prominently in people's minds, and the low priority it has been given by Clinton thus increases the doubts about him. And of course, in Europe, perhaps especially here in Britain where they think they speak more or less the same language, there is the added complication that American politics is not always well understood. At the same time, those who wish Clinton well voice understanding, in the sense of excusing, so "understanding" Clinton often means mentioning all the barriers to his desires that are formed by the functioning and malfunctioning of the political system and by the fact that he has a very weak electoral mandate.

In spite of these various uncertainties, moderated by this sometimes pitiful attempt to be "understanding," there is emerging a rather clearly-defined set of criteria by which to assess the Clinton administration as it proceeds to define itself over the next few months. As far as domestic policy is concerned, these criteria seem to be shared to a remarkable extent by observers all along the ideological spectrum, although their judgments about the meaning of these criteria naturally differ. In a nutshell, left-wingers admire, while right-wingers denounce, Clinton's apparent strategy of basing his future popular support on extending the American people's dependence on the federal government. As far as American foreign policy goes, there is emerging a shared view that Clinton's America is—understandably—less interested in Europe and more interested in Asia and the Americas, and perhaps less interested in the outside world altogether; but there remains much uncertainty here as to what to make of this situation: should Europeans be grateful or anxious about the loosening of the apron strings?

Europeans see Clinton as a president who is very inexperienced in foreign and military affairs, and they have noticed the wavering and improvisation. Some commentators have taken cheap shots at this; for example, in June The Times suggested that Warren Christopher might have been the perfect Secretary of State had the ozone layer been America's greatest foreign policy challenge. But there is also a more serious concern with American foreign policy, and a genuine appreciation of the difficulty of choosing (if that luxury is allowed) between foreign policy minimalism and a newly-defined globalism, and—even if minimalism is chosen—the difficulty of defining America's national interest. There are perceptions, sometimes accompanied by fears, that American foreign policy has been subordinated to American economic policy; thus in November, after several weeks of public debate on NAFTA and preparation for the December GATT decision, the diplomatic correspondent of Die Zeit took comfort from the American opinion polls that showed an uneasy reaction to Clinton's unidealistic, mercantilist foreign policy style. Because the world needs a strong international order, he remarked, the world cannot afford for America to become another Japan.

On domestic policy, there has been more clearly defined action by Clinton, and probably not more but certainly more definite reaction. Early in the year, at least up to June (when David Gergen joined the White House), European reactions to the new administration were characterized by disappointment, and by fear either that Clinton was not up to the job or—more sympathetically—that the job of being president has become too impossible for anyone, however able, to do. This latter theme—that an understanding of the difficulties he faces excuses many of Clinton's failures—was about the only thing that sympathetic observers could say about Clinton in the first few months. As late as the beginning of August (just before the narrow Clinton victory on the budget vote), a correspondent for The Guardian, a center-left newspaper, could write in praise of Clinton only that his "consistent underachievement, in contrast to Bush's over-reaching, suggests a better understanding of the limitations of presidential power." Modern presidents, especially after the end of the Cold War, simply lack "the ability to control events." The idea that the end of the Cold War has brought greater demands from citizens on domestic policies—and therefore on politicians—is pretty well established in Europe (as well it might be, given Europeans' own experiences); thus European commentators are ready to understand Clinton's problems in that light as well. However, some Europeans also wonder why Americans seem to be so disenchanted with their system of government, because they feel that America has, after all, not done so badly. These days when I teach my students about the malfunctioning "new American political system"—legislators reduced to ombudspersons, isolated presidents, hyperactive courts and bureaucrats, inactive and cynical citizens—they now ask me how such a system has managed to preside over such worldly success. A healthy question, if only because it goes against the tendency for us political scientists to provide the politicians that we study with so many excuses for their behavior! Even The Guardian's correspondent admitted that in his first six months in office Clinton had displayed "a natural's talent for truly spectacular ineffectiveness which his tendency to fudge, dodge and compromise only exacerbates." And in fact, contrary to the "understanding" view, some of the most spectacular failures of the early days of the Clinton administration can be put down not to the weakness of the presidency but to its strength. Perhaps unfortunately for Clinton, certain actions touching issues like federal funding of abortions, homosexuals in the military, and ponderous attention to "egg" (ethnicity, gender, geography) in appointments, were within his executive powers; his actions on these matters caused controversies within his own party, raised the country's doubts about his new Democrat credentials, and, as he admitted, weakened his promised "laser-beam" focus on the economy. We may well be living through "an era of presidential impotence," but in politics presidents' actions and inactions still matter more than anyone else's, and they can and no doubt will be held responsible for the way they use their powers.

The improvement in the Clinton record of achievement and public approval after the first few miserable months proves this point, for it owes as much to Clinton's relaunching of his administration as it does to good luck. His appointment of David Gergen in June was seen here as a somewhat puzzling turning point, with obvious dividends in the reduction of gaffes made much of by the press, but also with uncertain implications about the substance, as opposed to the image, of Clinton's presidency. For example, the attack on Baghdad, in rather tardy retaliation for the Iraqi plot against George Bush, was seen as a popularity and image-improving move more than a defining step in the emergence of a Clinton foreign policy. The uncertainty about the direction of the administration remains, and the suspicion is often voiced that for all the talk of a shift back to "centrist" positions, Clinton remains wedded, in more ways than one, to a not-very-new liberal Democratic program. Attitudes to this vary, but the perception is widely shared.

On the domestic front, the health care program is seen as the defining policy. An article in the Spectator at the beginning of November, "The Bribing of America," asserted that the Clintons' emphasis on security threatens American individualism and self-reliance. A fortnight later, the Times Literary Supplement carried the same message, although from a more sympathetic (left-wing academic) source: "Although the health care plan is being presented as modern, regulated capitalism, it is actually a Robin Hood scheme in the best social democratic tradition." Celebrating what the Spectator writer was deploring, this TLS writer interpreted Clinton's policies as a sign that the European left need not "mutate" in the direction of Thatcher and Reagan in order to survive: if Americans can be increasingly left-wing, then surely the Europeans can, too. If these identical judgments of the meaning of Clinton's presidency from the right and the left are accurate, then the immediate future of the republic would seem to depend on whether that crucial part of the electorate, the Reagan Democrats, can be wooed back to regular loyalty to the Democratic party by appeals to entitlements and to fears of insecurity. If they can, then Alexis de Tocqueville's worry about the attractiveness of the "soft despotism" of the parental state will again turn out to be one of the most useful ways of thinking about the tendencies of the modern democratic world.

But other developments lend support to a less gloomy conclusion, and suggest that Clinton (the husband if not the wife) is poised to move off in a more genuinely novel Democratic direction, which takes him closer to bipartisan cooperation than to New Deal-style state partisanship. Interrupting the flow of the health care debate has been the NAFTA debate. Observers in Europe noticed that Clinton's victory drew more support from Republican than from Democratic legislators; they were less likely to remark that in this debate the president and his vice-president waved the banners not of economic insecurity and anxiety but of opportunity and optimism. The ability of Clinton to prove himself and his party truly renewed may depend on his translating this kind of appeal to other issues, and on his carrying more of his own party with him; Reagan Democrats might be appealed to in these terms, even though trade union allegiances among them pulled them in the opposite direction on the NAFTA issue. One issue on which he might do this is the "other" security issue: Violent crime. This became more apparent in some of the November 1993 elections. As so often in the past, the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races have been taken as important barometers. The situation in 1993 can be compared to that in 1985, when a Republican governor was re-elected in New Jersey by continuing to appeal to conservative Democratic voters, and a Democrat was elected in Virginia by (as Frank Fahrenkopf, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, complained at the time) "out-Republicanizing us." But in 1993 the crucial emerging issue seems to be not the economy but violent crime. In New Jersey, the Democratic incumbent, Jim Florio, lost the election, in part because he helped raise taxes. (This race was also reported here by hopeful social democrats with an eye on the prospects for tax and spend programs in Europe, since it looked like Florio was about to win.) But while losing the race, Florio gained votes by sounding tough on crime. And in Virginia, George Allen won partly on that same issue. The first impact of the emergence of crime (and drugs) as top concerns of the electorate has been the reduction of Clinton's approval ratings (and an increase in the percentage—to over 50 percent—of those who think Mrs. Clinton has too much influence over her husband). Yet he has shown (from the early days of his presidential candidacy down to his mid-November speech at Memphis) that he too is capable at least of talking tough on this issue. He is usually careful to include in his proposed solutions an emphasis on the importance of jobs; as he said at Memphis, in fine Aristotelian fashion, "Work organizes life." This raises again the question whether new Democrat or New Deal Democrat policies on job creation are to be pursued, and whether self-reliance or reliance on the state is to be encouraged.

One of the reasons for the continuing uncertainties about such questions is that Clinton shares with other "reinventing government" fans the idea that ideas matter less than what works. Michael Dukakis can be seen as the Democrats' first new Democrat presidential nominee, when he tried to argue that the election of 1988 was about competence rather than ideology. Clinton, whose 1992 electoral strategy built on the Dukakis base, has to ponder the weakness of that base in a two-way race. Why is the attempt to avoid ideology so attractive to politicians today? Recall that George Bush started down that road in the 1988 election, too (turning back only when his claims based on his "resumé" or "experience" proved to be a losing strategy) and that he, like Clinton in many of the successful ventures of his second half-year, often relied on a bipartisan legislative strategy. Leading politicians of both of the major parties have been shying away from ideological and partisan warfare. They do this in response to that part of the public that is disenchanted with liberal-conservative divisions, and neutral towards partisan labels. They know very well that far more Americans identify themselves as moderates than as either conservatives or liberals (the meaning of "moderate" changes, but it remains opposed to ideological extremes), and that electoral identification with the major party labels, where it survives at all, is often a variable dependent on individual candidates' appeals rather than an independent variable determining candidates' electoral fortunes.

But however sensitive it is to public sentiment, there are dangers lurking in this end-of-ideology, end-of-party school of thinking. Clinton understands the popular basis of this school's appeal, but does he understand the dangers? The key difficulty with the anti-ideological approach to government is that although "reinventing government" presents itself as a results-orientated approach, impatient with ineffective methods, it is more accurately characterized as a means-oriented approach, which either takes political ends for granted (the old New Deal ends adjusted for the late twentieth century, say) or treats ends as unnecessary considerations in politics: the "boundless sea" view of the element of the ship of state. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, the authors of the recently-published book Reinventing Government, state very clearly in the preface their conviction that "the central failure of government today is one of means, not ends." The paperback edition of this book carries on its front cover some uncharacteristally concise advice from Bill Clinton: "Should be read by every elected official in America. This book gives us the blueprint." Notice that the recommendation is not that ordinary citizens or even aspiring politicians should read the book, but that already-elected officials should read it: in other words, first get yourself elected, however you can and must, and then apply the book's advice. The book's advice—much of it very wise—is that the process of government can be greatly improved by breaking away from the assumption that government bureaucracies can provide the low-cost, high-choice kind of service that citizens are (or should be) now demanding in public programs such as education, housing, transportation and health care. Osborne and Gaebler call for "entrepreneurial government" which does more with less, imitating the successful managerial styles preached by management gurus such as Peter Drucker, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. They chart the developments of these new managerial techniques by officials especially at the state and local level who have been encouraged to think about more effective and productive ways of doing their jobs, feed from unnecessary bureaucratic rules. Their basic argument is that Americans—like other modern countries—are finding that they do not need less government (the conservative line) or more government (the liberal line) but better government. More precisely, they say there is a need for better "governance"; the emphasis, always, is on the process and not the ends: "Governance is the process by which we collectively solve our problems and meet our society's needs."

This is evidently a seductive doctrine. (It has its champions in Britain, too, where there is currently a growth industry in management education.) Doubtless it has much to teach American citizens and politicians. But how can it be translated into politics, in any form but the populistic simplifications of a Ross Perot? The problems confronting the American polity are surely matters of defining the "problems" and "needs" of the country, and of deciding which of those problems and needs are properly addressed by (various levels of) government. One can agree that most government organizations can be made more effective—although the conservatism that is in truth the source of the government reinventers' skepticism about bureaucracy would point out that there is also the danger of overly-imaginative "entrepreneurial" officials!—and still disagree intelligibly and deeply about those fundamental political matters. If these substantive matters are relegated to mere electoral politics and image making, "reinventing government" promises not to cure but rather to deepen the alienation of citizens from their governments. To the government reinventers, "empowerment" of citizens means mainly treating them as "customers" with choices about government services that they receive, instead of as "clients" with little say. But neither clients nor customers are liberal democratic citizens, and the better-serviced customers of reinvented government might just be even more contented subjects of a soft despotism.

Clinton's attraction to reinventing government is part of his great sympathy with and his understanding of the American people. Judged by the admittedly high standards of a Churchill, a De Gaulle, or even a Thatcher, he appears to be rather too close to popular sentiments to be able to step back and to help redefine them. A politician's being out of touch to some extent with the people can make him all the better at helping them to renew their identity.