ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609250100
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON (AP)
PRESIDENTS get branded with a catch phrase, something that sums up their time in office. Their legacy.
For Lyndon Johnson: ``Vietnam War.''
For Richard Nixon ``Resigned in disgrace.''
For Ronald Reagan: ``Cut taxes, rebuilt the military.''
So what will it be for Bill Clinton?
``Proposed allowing gays in the military''? Too controversial.
``Identified a national health crisis and proposed a solution''? But he lost.
``Cut the deficit in half''? Awfully Republican boast for a Democratic president.
If Bill Clinton is re-elected, you can be sure, the search for that line of summation - a legacy - will dominate his second term. Clinton is still a work in progress, sometimes a big-government liberal, sometimes a less-government ``New Democrat.''
Clinton's other problem will be to combat the loss of energy that characterizes second terms, especially as attention turns to the making of a new president.
One way to rejuice an administration is to restaff it. New faces can be expected throughout the Cabinet and the White House. Four years is a long span for a Cabinet secretary, and there has been surprisingly little change in Clinton's official family.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher's departure is widely anticipated. Mentioned as replacements are Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the Bosnian peace accord in Dayton, Ohio; Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state and a longtime Clinton pal; and retiring Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga.
Two long shots: Newly minted Republican Colin Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would give a bipartisan cast to foreign policy, and George Mitchell, former leader of Senate Democrats.
Clinton's search for a second-term theme must accommodate the reality that there are neither government revenues nor a national appetite for lofty expansions of government.
That became clear in term one. Clinton started with a classically liberal proposal to rearrange health care in America. He overturned abortion restrictions imposed by Presidents Bush and Reagan. He proposed lifting the military's ban on homosexuals.
Rebuffed by the electorate in the off-year elections of 1994, he underwent a metamorphosis and became a centrist. He defined himself by what he was against: most of the GOP's ``Contract with America.''
``Big government does not have all the answers,'' he declared. ``The era of big government is over.'' He became an advocate of balancing the budget. He was forced to assert that he remained ``relevant.''
Even if Democrats manage to recapture Congress in 1996, term two would present Clinton with the same moderating constraints. In the scare of 1994, congressional Democrats also learned limitations; they saw that at heart America remains a conservative place.
A second-term Clinton could be expected to bang the drum for family-friendly, quality-of-life proposals that don't cost much government money.
He's already unveiled a host of them - V-chips, youth curfews, school uniforms, youth smoking restrictions, truancy prevention, unpaid leave from work for family duties, tax credits for college education, more ``corporate responsibility'' toward employees, meat inspection reforms, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing certain rights to victims of crime, family-oriented tax cuts.
But none suggests a grand scheme that would make Clinton's mark on history. And legacy is what preoccupies the few modern presidents to have more than one term. There have been only three who served a full second term since 1940 - Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Reagan.
Presidential scholar Martha Kumar of Towson State University in Maryland says Clinton will be up against history. Second terms have often been lackluster or worse, she says.
Roosevelt's second term was marked by the severe recession of 1937-38 and outrage over his proposal to enlarge the Supreme Court. Eisenhower had a recession, the Soviet's Sputnik space success and the downing of the U.S. spy plane, the U-2.
Watergate forced Nixon to resign in his second term. Reagan had to cope with the Iran-Contra scandal, ``demonstrating,'' says Kumar, ``the foolishness that can occur in a second term.''
``Second-term presidencies are generally pretty sad,'' concurs John Pitney Jr., a political scientist at California's Claremont McKenna College.
He cites three factors: fatigue sets in among administration officials; the political atmosphere changes - the coalition that brought the president into office begins to fray; and the president quickly finds himself a lame duck.
In a second term, Clinton would find attention shifting to his possible successors - the Democrats who might challenge Vice President Al Gore for the nomination. Already being speculated about are House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri, who sought the nomination in 1988; Govs. Roy Romer of Colorado and Evan Bayh of Indiana; Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska; maybe retiring Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.
``Clinton's big worry is not so much his legacy as it is, `How do I stay relevant?''' says Paul Light, a political scientist at the Pew Charitable Fund. ``That despair he felt in 1994 (after the Republicans took over Congress) would be nothing like he'd feel in 1999. The closer you get to the next election, the less relevant the second-term president is.''
Yet serious work beckons. Social Security and Medicare demand reform as fewer working people pay the taxes to support increasing numbers of retired people. The country's first baby boom president must address these baby boom crises - or answer to history for failing to do so, Light said.
``Twenty or 30 years from now, people will look back at this period as the time when we could save these programs,'' he added. ``Clinton could take the high road in fixing these great flagships of the New Deal and the Great Society.''
Money is a big problem for the next president. If he also continues to aim for elimination of deficit spending, Clinton will lack the wherewithal that bold liberal programs require. The answer to that dilemma is emerging in Clinton's recent rhetoric. He is jawboning others to do what he thinks is right. He wants corporations to treat their employees better. ``You can do the right thing and make money,'' he lectures them.
Legislation aside, the next president, Clinton or Bob Dole, probably will have a chance to affect history by appointing one, two or more Supreme Court justices.
Two justices are in their 70s. The court is so evenly divided that these appointments could be the next president's biggest legacy. Clinton has already named two justices, both liberal-leaning moderates.
Many second-term presidents turn to foreign affairs, where they don't have to put up with second guessing from Congress. Clinton, oriented toward domestic policy initially, might see his chance to become the president who finally brought peace to the whole Mideast. That's a legacy.
Even if Clinton wins, he may still be a minority president - one elected without a majority of the votes in a three-man election. That inability to claim to speak for a majority hampered him in term one.
Kumar says Clinton is inviting frustration by running for a second term without spelling out an ambitious second-term agenda.
If you didn't propose something, you can't claim a mandate for it. And the search for a catch phrase - a word or two summing up the Clinton presidency - will be all that much harder.
IF BILL CLINTON is re-elected, you can be sure, the search for that line of summation - a legacy - will dominate his second term. Clinton is still a work in progress, sometimes a big-government liberal, sometimes a less-government ``New Democrat.''
Clinton's other problem will be to combat the loss of energy that characterizes second terms, especially as attention turns to the making of a new president.
``My vision does not seek to promote government but to perfect it, to make it a better servant of the people. It doesn't seek to demean the free marketplace, but to strengthen it and to take account of what it cannot be expected to do.''
- From ``Between Hope and History,'' a book by Bill Clinton
discusses some of his philosophic underpinnings for a second term.
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