Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993 TAG: 9304200388
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT A. STRONG and WILLIAM F. CONNELLY JR.
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
POWERFUL PARALLELS
THE NEW president, the first in some time to represent the Democratic Party in the White House, got to Washington by calling for change during a period of profound national pessimism and heightened distrust of political institutions.As a Southern governor, his chances of winning his party's presidential nomination had often seemed slim. But once in office he appeared to be a new kind of Democrat who might transform his party. He had the added advantage of being joined in Washington by an influx of new members of Congress ready to challenge politics as usual.
He campaigned as a Washington outsider and, after defeating a Republican incumbent beleaguered by a weak national economy, hit the ground running with important policy initiatives. In his most important domestic proposal, he called upon the American people to accept serious sacrifices today for the long-term good of the country.
In his Inaugural Address, in town meetings and in other innovative formats for communicating directly with the American people, he denounced special-interest domination of Washington and took his comprehensive solutions to the nation's problems to the people before they received any serious attention on Capitol Hill.
The president is, of course, Jimmy Carter - and the resemblances between his early presidency and Clinton's are more than coincidental. They underscore the strengths and weaknesses of a moderate Democrat who seeks ambitious national reform.
Today, Clinton is widely praised for his media mastery and impressive national agenda, and Carter is considered a presidential late-bloomer, successful only in the role of former chief executive. Yet early in his presidency, Carter received the kind of accolades Clinton is now enjoying. Like Clinton, he was widely admired as a hardworking, highly intelligent policy wonk (a term not yet invented) able to master public policy minutiae.
What happened to the new president of 1977? What lessons do the fate of the Carter presidency hold for Clinton watchers?
Three factors slowed the momentum of Carter's domestic agenda.
The first came on Capitol Hill. The package of controversial legislative initiatives he presented was too much for his own party to swallow. Carter's on-again off-again economic stimulus package, his energy proposals, civil-service reform, deregulation and containment of hospital costs were unpopular with many voters and interest groups. These were bitter pills for congressmen, who never needed the short coattails in Carter's narrow presidential victory. Many Democrats on Capitol Hill gave lip service to the president's agenda without biting into the more controversial pieces.
Clinton's budget cuts, tax increases, base closings and health-care reform constitute a similarly painful package for a president with a weak electoral mandate. Any president must be ever mindful of the institutional conflict guaranteed by the separation of powers regardless of partisan control of the branches. Democrats may be able to produce their own gridlock without Republican assistance.
Carter's second problem arose when an extraneous issue - the fate of his friend and close adviser, Bert Lance, accused of financial misconduct as a Georgia banker - stole the media spotlight from the president's program. Eventually Lance was acquitted of all charges, but that verdict came years after he left the administration and after the scandal has sapped the strength of a president conspicuously associated with restoration of honesty in government.
Clinton, who appeared in the 1992 campaign to be more scandal-prone than any modern presidential contender, may have put such problems behind him, or fine-tuned his ability to handle them. But for any president, the possibility of losing political momentum when a minor mistake receives major media attention is always present.
A third problem for Carter was the emergence of foreign-policy issues, little talked about during the campaign, that consumed enormous amounts of presidential time and political capital. Even when Carter was successful in foreign affairs - as with the Panama Canal treaties and the Camp David negotiations - there were few, if any, domestic political rewards. In the final year of his administration, crises in Afghanistan and Iran helped bring the administration down. The end of the Cold War reduces dangers for the United States, but also leaves an international landscape littered with political debris that could easily trip the Clinton administration.
A Carter-Clinton comparison would be incomplete without some indication of important differences.
Carter was a one-term governor of Georgia, prohibited from seeking re-election by the state Constitution. This meant that he could, and did, carry out controversial policies without consideration of their electoral consequences. Always a political loner, Carter built a career by taking on difficult tasks for himself rather than building political coalitions to achieve his purposes.
Clinton, after his first defeat for re-election as governor of Arkansas, emerged a more skillful politician able to compromise and judge the political consequences of his actions.
There is also a significant difference between the electorate in 1976 and 1992. The American people in 1976 wanted a change in personnel rather than policy. They wanted a president who was not Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter's character and background made him an effective candidate in that environment.
In 1992, the American voter appeared to be more dissatisfied with the substance of economic policy than with the people who were in charge. George Bush was more victim than villain, and Clinton, despite his 43 percent plurality, may claim a more substantive mandate than the one Carter brought to Washington.
These differences in national mood and political skill may give Clinton more of a chance to succeed than Carter. But the political hurdles ahead are substantial and the last Democrat to take them on - despite high hopes and good intentions - stumbled along the way.
Robert A. Strong is William Lyne Wilson Professor of Politics and William F. Connelly Jr. is associate professor of politics at Washington and Lee University.