Emerging from the first round of the balanced budget debate with higher popularity, President Clinton is finally getting some respect as a candidate for re-election.
Six months ago, few in the political cognoscenti gave him much of a chance. The Republican majority in Congress had all but taken over the reins of government. Clinton was frustrated and floundering due to his political standing and the increasing prospect that he could be another one-term president. Now that prevailing impression has changed, thanks to his relentless battering of the GOP over Medicare cutbacks during the balanced-budget brawl that shut down the government.
Clinton’s tenacious hugging of the political center (“common ground” is an oft-repeated theme), along with a Republican field that so far has not spurred great public excitement, have contributed to his rise in the polls.
What was just a whisper a few weeks ago is now spoken openly by many political experts: Clinton could win in 1996.
They are just as quick to add that it will not be easy, despite the fact that the president is running ahead of the GOP front-runner, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.), in some states–such as Arizona and Kentucky–that months ago were considered in the Republican camp.
Though encouraged, the White House is trying to play down such rising expectations, knowing how quickly attitudes can shift in today’s highly volatile political climate–and how seldom during his presidency he has not scored an approval rating of more than 50 percent. He was elected with only 43 percent of the vote, and his approval ratings rarely went above that mark until recently.
“We’re ahead in most of the states we carried in 1992, but I think the election is going to be closer than that,” said White House political dircetor Doug Sosnik. “We’re in pretty good shape right now, better than I thought we would be a year ago.”
Clinton’s vulnerability as a candidate for re-election has always been apparent in the electoral map. James Thurber, a political science professor at American University, said the GOP candidate has an advantage in that the South is becoming increasingly Republican, with the mountain states and farm states also likely to vote GOP.
This leaves the president with the necessity of carrying the key coastal states (including California and New York) and the industrial Midwest along with a Southern state or two, he said.”That is a very hard thing to do,” Thurber added.
Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said in an analysis written before the budget controversy that the president faced an uphill fight in carrying virtually all these swing states, many of which were in the tossup category.
But White House officials said placing too much emphasis on the political map is premature, considering how Clinton surged after the budget battle.
Despite claims of many other analysts, administration officials say they have a good chance to win some Southern states, notably Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee, and they cling to the hope that they can spring an upset and pull Florida into the Democratic fold by criticizing the GOP’s overhaul of the popular Medicare program.
Mark Mellman, a Democratic consultant and Clinton supporter, said the president can put together an electoral majority by winning “the East, the industrial Midwest, and the Pacific West, and by cherry-picking out of the Mountain West and the South . . . I wouldn’t place a big bet on Florida myself.”
Mellman added that if a third-party candidate such as Ross Perot got into the race, he would have a “minor impact on the election, but it would favor Clinton. The president clearly has a rock-solid grip on 43 to 45 percent of the electorate. A third-party candidate helps divide the rest.”
Too many things could happen that could reverse Clinton’s current good fortune, such as heavy casualties of U.S. troops in Bosnia, new Whitewater disclosures or missteps in the budget fight with Congress.
With Republican Dick Morris dispensing political advice urging him to move to the center and position himself independently of Democrats in Congress, Clinton has pulled himself back into contention in the race. His not-so-subtle message is that he is the moderate Democrat who will curb Republican extremism in Congress.
Presidential scholar Charles Jones of the University of Wisconsin said Clinton is, in effect, an independent running on the Democratic ticket. Many Democrats in Congress do not trust him and do not hesitate to criticize him openly. They were angry when Clinton told a wealthy Houston audience that he had raised their taxes too much in 1993. In the 1994 mid-term elections, some did not want Clinton to come into their districts to campaign.
But Clinton’s thoroughgoing centrism may be where the country is right now, Thurber said. “They don’t like the wing nuts, as some Republicans in the House are called, or extremists on the left. They want their president to govern from a pragmatic middle.”
From the Democratic standpoint, Dole has two major liabilities: His age and his failure to excite the most activist wing of his party, the Religious Right. Clinton does not plan to make Dole’s age an issue, the White House said, but Mellman said it clearly will be. If the Religious Right stays home during the election, Thurber said, that will help Clinton.
The GOP will try to exploit one of Clinton’s greatest weaknesses, the widespread perception that he wavers and flip-flops on issues. It is part of the more general “character” issue that was used in 1992, that Clinton doesn’t possess the leadership qualities to be president.
“If the Republicans nominate Bob Dole, we win the flip-flop issue,” Mellman said. White House aides are eager to point to Dole’s shifting positions on issues during his long career in Congress. Nonetheless, they say Americans have what one called a “lower threshhold” for personal attacks.
While much of modern presidential politics is about such intangible issues that speak to whether a candidate is qualified to be president, the candidate’s message is important too. In 1992, Clinton’s was potent: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Now the president’s message is more complex. It is about beating back the impersonal forces of technology and the global economy with education and opportunity.
In this way, Clinton hopes to finesse the unease that many Americans feel about their jobs and the fact that their wages have remained stagnant or declined despite lower unemployment, a surging stock market and high corporate profits.
He hopes to trump the GOP balanced-budget plan by pointing out that he favors a balanced budget, too, but also stands behind preserving education, the environment, Medicare, Medicaid and the federal safety net.
The “common ground” theme invented by Morris has had some resonance with Americans, but Thurber said it is not as solid as the White House might think when it comes to the budget negotiations starting next week.
If voters come to the conclusion that Clinton is not serious about reforming welfare or balancing the budget, “that may hurt him in a marginal race,” Thurber said. By contrast, the GOP could be harmed in close races if it is seen as too tough on education or heartless in cutting social programs.
Substance will matter more in this election than in any in modern political history, many analysts believe. That suits policy wonk Clinton just fine.
