THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411180028
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
What now for Bill Clinton? The election left him with no visible means of support, a result signaled in advance by his own party's flight. Democratic candidates didn't want to defend him and, ultimately, didn't know how to defend themselves.
The Republicans marked him as the key issue and thus the big loser in the campaign, and do not have to prove the point. The rout of the Democrats, who lost eight seats in the Senate and 76 in the House, speaks for itself. In a post-election poll, only 30 percent of respondents (vs. 55 percent for the next Congress) thought the president should take the lead in setting national policy.
Years hence analysts may conclude the election was more about the culmination of trends than the shortcomings of the president. The conversion to Republican rule in the South began 50 years ago; similarly, there's been a slow but steady wasting of the Democrats' ability to galvanize large blocs of voters looking to them for specific rewards. This trend has been accented by the party's dependence on the same big-money interests that pay the Republicans' bills, and by a sense that the nation has more of a one- than a two-party system. Finally, there's the fact that Americans are unaccustomed to having Democrats in the White House.
But if these factors bear on Clinton's destitution, they don't explain it. There has been a personal failure. The president is not connected to the public by affection, respect or ideology; after two years, his core beliefs are not seen as fixed or formidable. Where he will stand is not predictable, as evidenced by me-tooism on school prayer.
He has had genuine legislative achievements (deficit-reduction) and contrived ones (the crime bill), but always there has been a sense that despite Democratic majorities in both houses, he has had to plead and wheedle his way out of a fix. If a one-word description were required, ``indecisive'' would serve.
The notion of an equally diminished Harry Truman as role model for Clinton's next two years passes quickly. Different men. Different times. And the Roosevelt coalition Truman was able to rally no longer exists.
All this puts Clinton down but not out. He still has the office, the veto and the personal abilities that got him to the White House against considerable odds. And while it's impossible to guess how these factors might play into a reversal of fortune, it's clear that the election strategy of Newt Gingrich offers possibilities.
The burden of making Reaganomics work was too much for the Gipper, but Gingrich again has promised to cut taxes and balance the budget, and now bears the burden of expectation. Skepticism is not limited to Democrats. Republican insiders and intellectuals are calling publicly for the party to prove its credibility by cutting subsidies to its own constituents. Their proposition - that corporate welfare is no less suspect than the individual dole - is fair. But it complicates the presidential ambitions of Republican kingpins who likely have little interest in playing take-away from their party's faithful contributors. In this conflict between shining promise and politics-as-usual, Clinton may find opportunities to gain some public favor.
In his book Dead Right, conservative author David Frum asked: ``Is there a way out?'' (of condemning the free lunch and having it, too) and answered: ``Only one: Conservative intellectuals should learn to care a little less about the electoral prospects of the Republican Party, indulge less in policy cleverness and ethnic demagoguery, and do what intellectuals of all descriptions are obliged to do: practice honesty, and pay the price.''
That's not a bad prescription for a Democratic president who has lost his way and his political base. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
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