THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602170002
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Republicans and their apologists in the media waste a lot of energy seething over the personal and political failings of the president. These flaws, to be sure, are considerable; he was known as ``Slick Willie'' among the homefolk before exiting Arkansas for the White House, and his presidency is known for shameless policy turnabouts keyed to political needs. These hardly amount to felonies, though; if they did, George Bush would be doing time for practicing voodoo economics and Ronald Reagan for Iran-Contra abuses of the Constitution.
Even so, there's rage. And rant. A Catholic priest in Louisiana calls Clinton ``the most evil man that's ever been in the White House.'' A Richmond editor calls him a ``lowlife liar.'' A Christian Coalition spokesman says Clinton is the most liberal president ever elected (no compliment intended).
What really gripes critics, one suspects, is not his vices but his ability to outlive prospects of doom; always, it seems, there's a last-minute reprieve and the rascal not only gets away but soon finds new favor in the polls. The epithets heaped upon him are a measure of his tactical successes and of the stupid aspects of the so-called Republican ``revolution'' proclaimed when the GOP regained control of Congress and - wouldn't you know? - chose school lunches as the first plank to pull off the edifice of the welfare state.
Gingrich & Co. were a grim lot who tended to portray a history of social legislation as corrupt and immoral rather than as misguided or outdated: They appeared more concerned with the triumph of their ideology than with its practical effects in the lives of people. Toward a government providing a myriad of benefits and services (to rich as well as poor) they sought to engender a contempt and hostility to match their own.
Indeed, it became commonplace for the speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America to ascribe particular and loathsome crimes of the day to passage of liberal legislation in the past. This, to be sure, connected with underlying political theory but so tenuously that it came across as unmitigated jackassery. Even if one agreed that Washington has engendered dependency and dissolution which the rigors (and mercies?) of the market will correct, the fact remains, as Bob Dole occasionally slips in, that ``government does some good things.''
More and more of these things come to mind when government shuts down; so does the fact that for all their divisions, Americans share a sense of common belonging. They do not like the unbending, machined consistency of Phil Gramm's us-and-them conservatism or hardboiled politicians of any stripe. Now, over the snows of New Hampshire, we see Bob Dole join Pat Buchanan in sudden tears over the declining wages and increasing layoffs of working folk.
Gingrich and Co. are the real architects of Bill Clinton's political comeback and of the paradox that a do-little president now sees the opportunity to run against a do-nothing Congress. The ``revolutionaries'' made a polestar of a balanced budget but instead of steering straight toward it, insisted on a huge cut in tax revenues to be made up by a reduction in future spending on Medicare, Medicaid and tax credits for the working poor. This defied the sense of the public as registered in polls and the advice of Dole and other seasoned senators who know a thing or two about working things out.
Clinton, one surmises, could hardly believe his luck. A liberal barred by Reagan-Bush deficits from conferring new benefits, he now was enabled by his enemies to defend existing payments which benefited not only elderly recipients but younger relatives as well. This gave Clinton a slamdunk and raised the question of why the professorial Republican revolutionaries lobbed the ball above the hoop.
The answer is that all along they wanted the tax cut more than they wanted the balanced budget which they claimed as their highest and best goal. Now and again it appears that Clinton's choleric critics may have four more years to kick him around. If so, it will be their own doing. When the Democrats were in charge, he was a sure loser. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publish[er of The Virginian-Pilot]. by CNB