THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508130023
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Shake Bill Clinton from a deep sleep and he will mumble ``common ground.'' More than once. ``Common ground'' has become his mantra, appearing in eight Clinton speeches made in little more than two weeks. That ground, he implies, is where a centrist president stands while his Republican opponents mill around the fringe - the outer edge.
If voters perceive Republicans as extreme, the Clinton rhetoric could take on a cutting edge. Indeed, emboldened already, he vowed last week to take a shutdown of government rather than be steamrollered into accepting congressional dictates on key issues. The mere tone of that pledge might help a president not known for firmness or fixed goals.
But what's needed really is higher ground: Of common (as in ordinary) ground, there's already enough. Both Clinton and the Republicans want to cut the income of a government awash in debt, whose budget they nonetheless pledge to balance; both want to reduce the costs of Medicare while taking nary a penny from Social Security, which accounts for one-fifth of all spending. While me-tooing Republicans generally, Clinton pictures them as easy on the rich (through tax cuts) and hard on the elderly (through benefit cuts).
His position would be more principled if he backed off his own tax cut and insisted that the GOP do the same. This step would invest the balanced-budget goal with genuine seriousness, soften spending cuts and invest Clinton himself with some clarity and focus. This, in turn, would make him more credible as a critic of various Republican proposals.
Some of these proposals are bogus (the ``work'' requirement of welfare reform) and some reckless (the assault on environmental regulation), but who's to notice when campaign tactics shape every presidential utterance? What irony - that Clinton's hopes ride more on reaction against Republican swagger than the merits of his own record of governance.
Once upon a time, Republicans gave their hearts to the line-item veto. When Ronald Reagan was in power and the national debt was coming up like thunder, this veto was a badge and a banner of conservatism.
Give it to the president, The Wall Street Journal frequently opined to Democrat Congresses, and he will be enabled not only to offset your wretched excesses of spending but mayhap strike mortally at your hoary dragons of waste and inefficiency.
In due course, Republicans won control of Congress with a Contract With America which included the veto, and the president said he would be pleased to approve it and to use it, and Newt Gingrich said it was good. ``For those who think that this city has to always break down into partisanship,'' said the speaker, ``you have a Republican majority giving to a Democratic president this year, without any gimmicks, an increased power over spending, which we think is an important step for America.''
Actually, it was a step not taken. While approved by both houses, conflicting versions of the veto have not been reconciled by the House and Senate. The veto has been drug over to the side of the road to rest with the stiffening carcass of term limits, another stricken panacea. The fate of these measures left some gaps in the Contract, but not to worry: Gingrich has substituted his own unconditional guarantee to the National Rifle Association, to wit: ``As long as I am speaker of this House, no gun-control legislation is going to move in committee or on the floor of this House.''
The NRA's chief lobbyist asked for and got that pledge from Gingrich in writing - a fact that says much about the priorities of promise-keeping in the House of Gingrich. The gun is No. 1. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. by CNB