THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 19, 1996 TAG: 9606190001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: 80 lines
Doomed to a one-term presidency. That was the consensus judgment on Bill Clinton after the electorate voted in 1994 to turn Capitol Hill over to Republicans.
The midterm congressional elections, most commentators asserted, constituted a referendum on the stewardship of the waffling Democrat in the White House. He had lost. Big.
But not long into its performance, the Republican-controlled 104th garnered a 70 percent disapproval rating in the polls.
To the astonishment of commentators, a fickle public blamed Congress, not President Clinton, for the two government shutdowns last winter in the tug-and-pull over a balanced budget.
As winter segued into spring, pollsters reported a 20-point Clinton lead among probable voters over the Republicans' presumptive presidential nominee, Bob Dole, then U.S. Senate majority leader.
The president's souffle advantage in the polls has fallen roughly 6 points since Dole bade goodbye to the Senate to become a full-time campaigner for the Oval Office. But before that happened, people were speaking of Clinton as a sure winner next November. Looks to be less of a sure thing now.
Still, Clinton is in better shape today than immediately after the Republican congressional sweep, when the apparently immutable truths were that he would lose every Southern state in the 1996 presidential election and that his re-election was impossible. Then Florida tilted a mite Clinton's way after the Republican Congress properly directed its attention to too-fast growth in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security costs - but overreached by proposing tax cuts from which well-off Americans would benefit more than others.
Clinton suddenly was the Defender Against Out-of-Control Reforms and Budget Cuts and Public Policies Harmful to College Students, Children and the Lame, Halt, Blind and Jobless.
Simultaneously, Clinton covered his right flank by, among other things, championing legislation to combat terrorism, put additional police on the streets and alert neighbors to the presence of convicted molesters of children. He also could point to shrinkage of the federal bureaucracy and the budget deficit.
Meanwhile, his luck held abroad. U.S. military intervention in Haiti stopped the flight of Haitians in leaky boats to the United States. The insertion of U.S. military personnel into the Bosnian snake pit had not yet proved disastrous. U.S. exertions for peace between Israel and its enemies had produced some progress before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Arab suicide bombings of Israelis, Israeli retaliation in Lebanon and the election of Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's prime minister.
That Clinton has an edge in the polls is remarkable, considering the mistrust he inspires, exacerbated by his and the first lady's clumsy handling of Whitewater-related allegations, the embarrassing Paula Jones sexual-harassment lawsuit and the convictions of Arkansas partners and associates and other Friends of Bill and Hillary.
Yes, the economy is good, as the analysts say, and the stock market is going great guns. But the Federal Reserve reports that the rich are still getting richer and the poor are still getting poorer and white-collar Americans are still being laid off by businesses whose chief executive officers increase their own already record-high compensation when the downsizing they order causes their corporations' stock to soar.
Middle Americans' distress translated into votes for Clinton and Ross Perot that sent George Bush packing. It manifested itself again in the eviction of the long-entrenched congressional Democrats.
Yes, the economy was improving during the latter part of the Bush term, as the administration insisted. But selling voters on that wasn't easy when mass layoffs made headlines day after day and the laid off, encumbered by mortgages and car payments and education costs, abruptly confronted life without job, health insurance or pension.
Few families have been untouched, at least indirectly, by the restructuring of U.S. businesses and the diminished economic outlook for many college graduates.
Although anything could happen between now and November that could decide whether Clinton wins a second term, the outcome of the presidential election could again turn primarily on the grass roots' perception of which candidate is most on the side of middle Americans. As of this week, Clinton seems to be that candidate. Next week, who knows? MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB