Mutually assured destructionEight months after impeachment, the defeat of the test ban proves
that the air in Washington is still radioactive. And it's likely
to get worseBy Richard Lacayo
October 18, 1999
Web posted at: 12:36 p.m. EDT (1636 GMT)
In the days before the Senate voted, there was never much of a
public debate over the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Then suddenly it was defeated in a vote that stunned not only
Washington but just about every other capital. And now, just as
suddenly, the Beltway is consumed by concepts like nuclear
blasts, mutual assured destruction and radioactive fallout. Of
course, not much of that talk revolves around the treaty. Those
just happen to be the terms you need to describe the mood between
Congress and the President, a climate so poisoned by the
impeachment fight that as Bill Clinton moves toward his final
year in office, he doesn't only have scorched earth behind him.
He has it in front of him.
Ten years from now, this will be seen as the epitome of
partisanship, says a White House aide. "The rest of the country
has already moved on. Washington, as usual, is the last to figure
it out." The struggle over impeachment left Republicans furious
that Clinton had escaped them. To make matters worse, he keeps
escaping them. Two weeks after he vetoed the G.O.P. tax-cut bill
last month, Republicans failed to stop the Democratic version of
the HMO-reform bill in the House. And coming soon is a proposed
minimum-wage hike that most Republicans oppose but probably can't
stop.
However, it has been different on foreign-policy issues, on which
Clinton can seem as inattentive as most Americans. Even for
initiatives as important as the test-ban treaty, which was
supposed to consolidate four decades of bipartisan arms-control
efforts, Clinton failed to prepare the ground of public opinion.
While the Bush Administration prefaced the Gulf War with months
of explanations, NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia this year
seemed to come out of nowhere. So on foreign policy, Republicans
have sensed an opening to humiliate a President they could not
topple, even if that means discarding the tattered remains of the
bipartisan consensus on foreign affairs. Last year, when Clinton
ordered the bombing of Iraq on the eve of his impeachment, Senate
majority leader Trent Lott was unafraid to issue a statement
questioning the timing of the attack. In April, House Republicans
defeated by a tie vote a measure in support of the NATO campaign
against Serbia.
So it was no wonder that the Senate's perfunctory debate on the
test-ban treaty included a moment in which Jesse Helms, chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, offered an imitation
of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in conversation with Clinton
and signing off with "give Monica my regards." Washington may be
the one place in America where people still talk about Lewinsky.
It was also no wonder that Clinton was in a genuinely vengeful
mood after the vote when he accused Republicans of "reckless
partisanship."
Whatever it means for America's status abroad, the bitter
collision over the test ban is a bad omen for the future of
peaceful co-existence between the President and Congress. Next up
is the contest over the budget. Though Congress may finish all 13
appropriations bills by the end of this week, Clinton could veto
as many as five of them, beginning a pitched fight that may
decide the 2000 election. And don't expect him to position
himself as a centrist, the role he played in the balanced-budget
agreement two years ago and on welfare reform in 1996.
For the runup to 2000, Democratic leaders like Tom Daschle in the
Senate and Dick Gephardt in the House want to pick fights with
the Republicans. A lot of Washington believes that Clinton, who
owes them for standing by him during impeachment, is now disposed
to stand by them in return. In his press conference last week,
however, Clinton insisted that there was simply no reasonable
leadership figure to deal with anymore on the other side.
Either way, there won't be much braking from the White House when
congressional Democrats hit Republicans for starving schools and
the environment or for being too beholden to the party's pro-life
wing, which likes to add antiabortion riders to spending bills
wherever it can. And with Lott disinclined to play dealmaker,
Republicans will be trying hard to frame the budget debate to
their advantage by claiming that Democratic spending proposals
will require draining money from the Social Security trust fund.
Vulnerable congressional Democrats like Earl Pomeroy in North
Dakota and Debbie Stabenow in Michigan have already been hit in
their home districts by Republican TV spots accusing them of just
that.
Next, Republicans may try to force votes on specific Clinton
spending proposals, leaving Democrats vulnerable to ads stating
that they supported, say, money to protect the striped bass over
money for retirees. "Whatever tear-jerking program they can come
up with, they'll have to justify raiding Social Security," says a
G.O.P. Senate leadership aide. "That just won't work."
Something else that may not work is compromise. One of the things
that make the system operate is personal contact between the
President and congressional leaders, especially those that come
from different parties. But Clinton and Lott have had the kind of
working relationship that Mike Tyson had with Evander Holyfield.
Before Clinton phoned Lott last week to urge him to allow the
test-ban treaty to be withdrawn without a vote--a call that
Republicans complain came just 90 minutes before the vote was
scheduled--the two men had not spoken since July. Lott says that
if Clinton had called a week earlier, it could have been
withdrawn.
But Lott is in no mood to play nice. He knows that Democrats in
Congress set the debacle in motion by pushing all summer for a
vote on the treaty, fully expecting that the Republicans would
never oblige. When Lott decided to call their bluff, Democrats
had no time to turn the sizable but less than urgent public
sentiment in favor of the treaty--it ran as high as 80% in some
polls --into an irresistible public demand that would force more
Republican Senators to vote with the Democrats. In the end just
four Republicans defected. Lott also knew that he had to placate
his conservative wing, still angry over his willingness two years
ago to bring to the Senate floor the treaty banning chemical
weapons.
In a final effort, Daschle and Lott agreed that the test-ban
treaty could be withdrawn if Democrats promised, as Republicans
demanded, not to introduce it again during Clinton's presidency
except under "extraordinary circumstances." Republicans, who
feel they always lose when they cut a deal with Clinton,
wouldn't go for that one. As White House press secretary Joe
Lockhart said, "They act as if they're afraid even to get in the
same room with us because they'll get taken." In the year to
come they won't be taking much. Or giving it.
--Reported by
Jay Branegan and John F. Dickerson/Washington
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Cover Date: October 25, 1999
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