THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601060003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
The game goes on. Using unique presidential powers, Bill Clinton has regained center stage and boosted his approval ratings in the polls. Vetoes force majority congressional Republicans to deal with him on equal terms; his dispatch of troops to Bosnia as commander in chief punctuates dithering with decisiveness.
No one asks anymore if Bill Clinton is relevant. Not even the imperious Newt Gingrich can summon the president to parley over appropriations, so he and Bob Dole are seen traipsing to the White House. Thus an election year seems to open auspiciously for the president, but mostly what we see is his skill in stringing out retreats. His strength owes much to the bad manners of his enemies; under the surface of events, he remains a president who has added little to the plurality which elected him and whose party on his watch has lost not just majority status but stalwart leaders like Sam Nunn and Bill Bradley who are quitting.
There's some sense that the president has got on top of his job. His conduct of foreign policy clearly has moved to the plus side; as always, he is resilient, and there is favorable movement in the polls.
But there's still little distance between Clinton's lows and highs in job-approval ratings. A move from the mid-40s to the low 50s is small change and, in any event, there are many polls to go before the one that really counts. Also, current poll results are clouded by the question: What if Newt Gingrich had read more Dale Carnegie and less Heidi Toffler?
On the issues, after all, the speaker and his allies have won consistently. Clinton was whipped on health-care reform, on welfare reform and on all elements of a balanced-budget strategy. He moved from having no fixed date for achieving balance to a 10-year scheme and finally to acceptance of the GOP's demand that the job be done in seven years using revenue forecasts more conservative than his own and requiring more restraint in government spending.
This crawfishing suggested belief by the president that he was on the wrong side of public opinion. Further evidence came when the champion of the poor volunteered to a well-heeled audience that he'd raised their taxes too much in order to push down deficits. But having agreed to strategies that compel reductions in services, Clinton now costumes himself as defender of the downtrodden against heartless Republicans.
While many of us would not want some of them to hold our mortgages, questions arise: Is it not more compassionate to trim services now than to slash them later when pensioners receiving benefits exceed the number of workers paying for them? Is it not fairer for those who've enjoyed the free lunch to pay some of the overdue tab than to pass the whole bill to our children?
It's hard to see how the president can sustain the advantage he's gained by flaying his opponents for ``savage'' cuts that happen to resemble his own. Even if he had an agenda of his own, his party is in the minority and divided as he himself seems divided. The only real hope for the Democrats is scaring voters away from the budgetary restraints that they, returned to power, would have to institute themselves.
Clever rhetoric doesn't reduce the vast national debt or change the fact that compound interest works 24 hours each day to enlarge it. Nor should it obscure the fact that even the ``savage'' cuts the president bewails carry no guarantee that the budget actually will be brought into balance. They do represent a policy and a will to implement it. Lacking those elements, politics is mere drift, one government account that shows a surplus. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB