THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 20, 1995 TAG: 9507200394
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
Five months after questioning the future of affirmative action, President Clinton on Wednesday reached into his own past for the answer, reciting the nation's racial progress since his days growing up in segregated Arkansas and vowing to support continued government intervention on behalf of minorities and women.
``My experiences with discrimination are rooted in the South and in the legacy slavery left,'' Clinton said at the start of a solemn speech at the National Archives. He concluded: ``The job of ending discrimination in this country is not done. . . . We should reaffirm the principle of affirmative action and fix the practices. We should have a simple slogan: Mend it, but don't end it.''
The president sketched in broad terms the changes he'd like - a crackdown on fraud in government contracts steered to minorities and women under ``set-aside'' programs, for instance, and ensuring that firms only benefit for a fixed period of time.
The thrust of the speech, though, was a full-throated endorsement of government preference programs, not the political retreat that the administration had mulled last February, when Clinton began a government-wide review of affirmative action by saying, ``We shouldn't be defending things that we can't defend.''
In its forceful and uncompromising language, the speech represents a substantial political risk for Clinton, who has trod carefully on the divisive affirmative action issue since his first presidential campaign. To be re-elected, he needs the support of moderate voters who may be suspicious of affirmative action. He may especially need them in California, where the issue burns hottest.
But as he heads into the campaign year, he may need even more to solidify his political base among minorities and liberals, and to avert a potential independent threat from Jesse L. Jackson.
Still, it was unclear Wednesday how much practical effect Clinton's words will have. Republicans in Congress want to do more to end affirmative action. The Supreme Court recently tightened standards for such programs. And more than a dozen states have proposals to end them.
As one government lawyer said Wednesday, there is ``clearly a tension'' between the president's speech staunchly supporting affirmative action and a separate presidential directive that tells federal agencies to implement a strict Supreme Court ruling that undercuts affirmative action.
The ruling says the government may not use ``racial classifications'' to award any funds, except to remedy proven, past discrimination by an agency or its contractors.
Despite the uncertain future of affirmative action programs, many leaders of minority and women's groups who earlier had expressed resentment of Clinton's review roared their approval when the president spoke Wednesday.
Republican presidential candidates, by contrast, rushed out statements accusing Clinton of supporting reverse discrimination and promising to make the issue a centerpiece of the 1996 campaign.
Some moderate Democrats, who had urged Clinton to aggressively restructure affirmative action to put less emphasis on race and more on helping all low-income people, offered tepid comments.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, didn't criticize Clinton but took an opposite interpretation of recent Supreme Court decisions. He said decisions such as Adarand vs. Pena, which requires that preference programs be narrowly tailored to a ``compelling'' government interest, mean that the days are unavoidably numbered for many race-based programs.
But Clinton, faced with a sure fight next year, decided that he was more comfortable politically and personally with the traditional allies of affirmative action by his side. Despite his equivocating last winter, he ultimately decided he could defend virtually everything the government is doing now to push educational institutions and private firms to open doors wider for minorities and women.
His argument, delivered in an echoing rotunda, was that widespread prejudice still exists and that greater inclusiveness in education and hiring benefits the economy as a whole.
Much of the current backlash against affirmative action, Clinton said, comes not from cases of reverse discrimination, which he argued are rare, but from ``sweeping historic changes'' taking place in the global economy that have left many lower- and middle-income whites struggling to keep pace.
``Affirmative action did not cause the great economic problems of the American middle class,'' Clinton said. ``It is simply wrong to play politics with the issue of affirmative action and divide our country at a time when, if we're really going to change things, we have to be united.''
Those words won Clinton the warmest praise he has received in months from Jackson, who earlier had accused the president of contributing to a ``scapegoating'' trend.
``He set a strong moral tone for the country, and I thought it was presidential in the best sense of the word,'' Jackson said in an interview, before adding that ``it will take more than one speech'' before his concerns about Clinton are sufficiently allayed to rule out a presidential bid.
Republican leaders were almost uniformly derogatory in their comments. Clinton said his concept of affirmative action does not include rigid ``quotas,'' only flexible goals, and does not allow the hiring of unqualified people. But Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., a presidential candidate and affirmative action supporter-turned-critic, called this a dodge.
The issue isn't the quota vs. goal distinction, he said in a statement, but ``the practice of dividing Americans through any form of preferential treatment. . . . The real issue here isn't preferences for the unqualified, which virtually every American opposes, but preferences for the `less-qualified' vs. those who are `more-qualified.' '' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by AP
President Clinton
Clinton: "Let me be clear: Affirmative Action has been good for
America"
Color photo
Robert C. Scott, D-3rd District
"The administration's thorough examination of the subject confirms
that discrimintion still exists and that affirmative action is still
needed to address it."
Color photo
Jesse Jackson, possible presidential candidate
"...one of his finer hours as a leader of this country."
Color photo
Bob Dole, majority leader
"Group preferences have grown so much they are "pitting American
against American... for a piece of the government pie."
KEYWORDS: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION by CNB