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At play on Clinton's field
They're running against his character, but the candidates can't
escape the President's masterly post-ideological politics
By NANCY GIBBS
January 10, 2000
Web posted at: 10:56 a.m. EST (1556 GMT)
A sitting president must hate watching the candidates who are
trying to take his job as they signal all the ways in which they
are better men than he. John Kennedy promised vigor, after eight
years of footage of Ike on the golf course; Jimmy Carter
promised he would never lie to us; George Bush promised a
kinder, gentler nation, which prompted Nancy Reagan to mutter,
"Kinder and gentler than who?" Bill Clinton promised to feel our
pain, unlike the Preppie President who had never appeared to
suffer so much as a toothache. And so the candidates in both
parties take the field in the year 2000 carrying banners that
proclaim, in a variety of codes and scripts, THAT THEY ARE NOT
BILL CLINTON, defining themselves by who they are not before
they can tell us who they are.
George W. Bush, out to avenge a heroic father who did indeed know
something about suffering, denounces the baby-boom gospel of "If
it feels good, do it." Bill Bradley preaches the Politics of
Moral Superiority and grand crusades, the complete inversion of
the pragmatic Clinton micropolitics of 1996. John McCain markets
fearlessness and honor, not the kind of guy who would do
absolutely anything to hang onto his job. And even Al Gore,
lashed to Clinton's mast these past seven years, could stand up
in a debate last week and act as though he would turn to dust if
he so much as mentioned Bill Clinton's name.
If there is any satisfaction for Clinton, watching this spectacle
of renunciation, it might come from this: they all, one way or
another, may have come to do battle with him, but they all have
to play by his rules and fight on his field. The economy is too
sound, the public too content, for any leading candidate to write
off the centrist politics that prevailed throughout the '90s. A
TIME/CNN poll last week found that even Democrats aren't looking
for "big, bold" ideas from their leaders: only 14% say they are,
in contrast to 81% who prefer "steady progress." The number of
voters of all kinds who think things are going well in the
country, 80%, is the highest in 25 years of polling. Ever since
Clinton changed the rules of the war and mastered the Politics of
Infiltration, in which you can pluck your enemies' agenda and use
it against them, the candidates who hope to succeed him can't
afford to ignore him.
Clinton was a reluctant convert to balancing the budget, but
that hasn't stopped him from taking credit for it. And even as he
was morphing into a fiscal conservative, he was luring his
opponents onto his turf. He has maneuvered the Republican
Congress into arguing over which party is more devoted to
defending Social Security. He is pushing G.O.P. lawmakers to
soften their stand on gun control and hmo reform, and last week
to abandon their $792 billion tax-cut plan in favor of an
alternative that is one-sixth the size. When Trent Lott boasts
that Republicans, who once vowed to abolish the Education
Department, actually put more money for education into the budget
than Clinton requested, you have to ask, Did God really put
Republicans on earth to outbid Democrats on domestic-spending
programs?
Meanwhile, out on the campaign trail, despite the flames and
sparks, all four leading candidates have a way of sounding a lot
like Clinton as they leave ideological purity to Gary Bauer and
Alan Keyes and trundle down the center of the field. Bush and
Gore both call for the deployment of faith-based organizations to
backstop government; Bradley and McCain share examples of
campaign-finance abominations. By last week, McCain was even
borrowing Gore's class-war vocabulary to attack Bush's tax plan.
Both sides have ceded ground: the Democrats are each pushing
health-care plans that, in their level of ambition, do not come
close to matching what Bush's father proposed back in 1992. The
leading Republicans, while denouncing the Democrats' proposal
that gays be allowed to serve openly in the military, settle on
Clinton's compromise of "Don't ask, don't tell," rather than
calling for a return to an outright ban.
Now that Clinton has made Social Security the Holy Grail,
everyone has to sip from his cup. McCain spent last week
denouncing Bush's "fiscally irresponsible" tax-cut plan for
threatening Social Security while returning 60% of the surplus to
the top 10% of wage earners, "like most of his top contributors."
Said McCain: "I don't believe rich Americans need tax breaks."
His plan, which he intends to unveil this week, would cost about
$600 billion over 10 years, or 40% less than Bush's, and focus on
Social Security protection and on propping up lower-income
Americans. McCain's campaign chairman, Rick Davis, admits that
the plan sounds a lot like what Clinton has said over the years.
"Maybe Bill Clinton stole these concepts and made good use of
them," he said. "But we're going to take them back."
Bush's plan gives a nod to the tee-time-and-tonic-water
Republicans who like cuts in the top marginal rate. But he
broadens it by slicing rates for the working class too and jabs
McCain for caring more about paying down the debt than providing
relief to a single mother earning $25,000 a year. While Bush is
positioning himself to McCain's right, he still ignored a major,
long-standing G.O.P. priority: his plan leaves capital-gains-tax
rates untouched. And all through his speeches and policy
positions are signals that he is the kind of Republican who cares
about "those who live on the outskirts of poverty" and vows to
"leave no child behind"--postideological promises that, during
primary season at least, would once have been uttered only by a
liberal Democrat.
When Bush extols the "men and women who work hard, dream big,
love their family, serve their neighbor," it brings tears to the
eyes of New Democrat guru and Clinton friend Al From. A wonderful
speech, he says. "I wish I'd written it. In fact I had, several
years earlier." Bush gave three education speeches last fall,
compared with just one on foreign policy and tax reform. With the
exception of a provision for school vouchers, Bush's education
plan was shamelessly similar to one the Democratic-leaning
Progressive Policy Institute published in its journal.
Democrats boast--and Republicans fear--that Clinton will have a
chance to set the agenda for the campaign through his State of
the Union speech, which falls neatly between the Iowa caucuses
and the New Hampshire primary. His approval ratings remain high
for a once impeached lame duck, as he presides over Middle East
peace talks and millennial revelry and the longest expansion in
American history. This week he plans to call for major new
funding for charter schools--the Democrats' answer to school
vouchers. "Two months ago, people thought George W. Bush would be
setting the agenda," gloats White House spokesman Joe Lockhart,
but "the reality is, it's going to be the President."
And yet the issue that may truly dominate this race is by no
means Clinton's--except in the negative sense--and that is the
issue of character. All the candidates are reflecting this
reality: with the world changing so fast, it is impossible to
predict what challenges the next President will confront--and so
it is all the more important that voters find someone whose
instincts and experience and value system they trust. A large
majority of voters say they want a President with vision and
character and experience; many fewer say they care whether they
agree with him on the issues. So even as they broadly embrace an
agenda of opportunity and fiscal responsibility, the candidates
fight over who can restore the public's faith in our leaders,
soothe our souls and burnish the dignity of the office. There is
a reason this race has focused so much on biography and
character, even amid the flurry of debates and policy papers.
That too is Bill Clinton's legacy.
--Reported by James
Carney/with Bush, John F. Dickerson/with McCain and Jay Branegan/Washington
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