Not long ago, William Daley, the mayor’s prescient younger brother, suggested the White House should cut the Democratic convention here from four days to three.
Maybe President Clinton should have listened.
Considering the turbulent political and personal life of the first Baby Boomer president, it should be no surprise that even with ever-brightening re-election prospects, he couldn’t quite get through the full four days of his convention without a roaring scandal.
He made no mention Thursday night of the controversy that erupted in the morning when his top political strategist, Richard Morris, resigned after reports that Morris allowed a prostitute to listen to his phone calls with the president.
That incident gave loud exclamation to this point: Throughout his career, Clinton has been most vulnerable when things are going well.
After three days of a clear and positive focus on the president, the final day of the convention brought back the dark cloud that seems to hover over him when the sun otherwise is shining.
But true to his political dexterity, the president pivoted within the span of 12 hours to try to frame this election in terms most friendly to an incumbent: peace and prosperity.
His acceptance speech Thursday night also highlighted another advantage he holds over Republican nominee Bob Dole. Call it the communications gap.
In cadence, delivery and message, Clinton articulated achievements in office and offered tangible programs for a second term that seemed highly tailored to appeal to the all-important middle of the American electorate.
Using a bridge as a potent metaphor, he cast himself as a candidate as the future and Dole as a candidate of the past. “. . . Hope is back in America,” he said. “We are on the right track to the 21st Century.”
He will have to get his campaign on the right track first. The speech brought him only part of the way.
Still, Democrats leave Chicago comforted that few but the archivists will find the need to recall the riotous convention of 1968. The ghost, as the president has said, was buried. And they finally trotted out the Kennedys to speak.
City officials can puff their chests in the knowledge that they handled the big show. Harry Caray singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was an inspired touch.
All was according to plan, the design to send the president into his last campaign on the strong wind of a memorable acceptance speech.
Enter the Clinton jinx.
The president brings much of the trouble on himself. His political career is marked by an inability to say no, and a penchant to embrace too many points of view. His critics say this is a product of having no core convictions; his champions say it is the product of an expansive mind.
Morris cleverly insinuated himself as the self-proclaimed architect of the president’s political comeback after the historic Republican victories nationwide in the 1994 midterm elections. To many of Clinton’s White House advisers, Morris was always the devil standing on one of the president’s shoulders, whispering in his ear that victory was far more important than ideology.
But the comeback was built on more than Morris; he just provided a framework. Democrats were able to paint the Republicans as callous extremists who would gut Medicare and other sacred programs, as coldly robotic men who cared only about cutting government spending.
They gave Clinton the chance to do what his opponents said he could not: Stand up and resist the impulse to compromise. Republicans thought he would cave in to their threats to close the government and default on the debt.
But Clinton had read the politics of the budget battle differently and correctly. He gambled that the American people would punish those whom they blamed for shutting down the government, and that it would be the Republicans.
In his acceptance speech, he continued to cast himself as the Great Protector: “As long as I am president, I will never allow cuts that devastate education for our children, pollute our environment, end the guarantee of health care under Medicaid or violate our duty to our parents under Medicare. Never.
“. . . I will never allow the Republican leadership to use the blackmail threat of a government shutdown to force these burdens on the American people.”
Despite his political frailties, Clinton, more than any other modern politician, has shown an enormous capacity to take a punch. He has endured several direct challenges to his character; Morris, his political consiglieri, provides the latest.
The president’s campaign team has had practice with this–remember Gennifer Flowers?–and they have prevailed.
Moreover, Americans have come to accept that Clinton is a gray figure in public life, who infuriates one day and inspires the next. While there is ambivalence about him, there also is acceptance.
His style, embroidered by Morris, is to merge the concepts of governing and campaigning in what Clinton’s biographer, David Maraniss, described as the permanent campaign. Morris counseled Clinton to yield to pragmatism over idealism and rely on idealism when pragmatism yielded no good options.
It worked for Clinton as governor of Arkansas and in the second half of his first term, it has worked for him as president as well. But he has probably been better at campaigning than governing.
The Morris affair highlights all the doubts that Americans have about the president’s character. The acceptance speech highlighted all the hope they have in him.
Character has rarely decided a presidential election. And the character of a campaign adviser never has.
The Morris news was amplified forcefully in the media wind tunnel of the United Center, but it won’t likely be an issue in November.
One adviser to Bob Dole’s presidential campaign, standing outside the United Center Thursday night, predicted the Morris story would fade within 48 hours.
Voters admire several things about the president, even if they don’t love him. Few dispute Clinton’s political skills and many have come to admire his tenacity, and the roll-up-your-sleeves approach to work. “For too long, leaders asked who to blame,” the president said. “We asked, what are we going to do.”
And they admire his optimism.
“Our strategy is simple but profound: opportunity for all, responsibility for all, a strong American community where everyone has a place and plays a role,” he said.
“I would not have missed this trip for all the world. For this trip shows that hope is back in America. America is on the right track for the 21st Century.”
In the next 10 weeks, Clinton’s sharpest skills will be on display. He is one of the best natural campaigners of his age, and this campaign will be his last.
