The Dead-End Kid
Mesmerized by momentary surges in the polls, President Clinton has ventured into a constitutional swamp that leads nowhere electorally. His vetoes of Republican appropriations have won temporary support from those, especially the elderly, who are frightened by Republican budget-balancing proposals. But his devious arguments--that the Congressional Budget Office numbers that were the only good ones in 1993 need not be used in 1995, that smaller increases in Medicare spending like the ones his wife proposed are now vicious cuts--cannot be sustained. And the Constitution, which gives taxing and appropriating powers to Congress, provides little leverage to a president who wants to spend more money than does Congress.
Clinton, who campaigned in 1992 as a champion of change, seeking to win younger voters, is now campaigning as an enemy of change trying to scare older voters. Those over 65 were his best age group even in 1992. The good news for Democrats is that they have a strong vote-getter in Franklin D. Roosevelt; the bad news is that he has been dead for 50 years and many voters under 65 know little about him.
More-constructive approaches are certainly possible. In Minneapolis last month, three Democratic formers--former Massachusetts senator and presidential hopeful Paul Tsongas, former Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm and former Minnesota Rep. Tim Penny--made a plea for scaling back entitlements while attacking Republicans for their tax cuts and conservative cultural stands. These early tribunes of baby boom liberalism know that Medicare and Social Security benefits cannot be maintained at current levels past about 2010 without unthinkable tax increases or crowding out all other federal spending. "Our generation's self-indulgence has threatened the future of our progeny," said Tsongas. "We've been criticized for being disloyal to our party. My response is: Look into the eyes of your children. Do they not deserve a loyalty beyond party?"
The Tsongas-Lamm-Penny approach, like the Republicans' seven-year path toward a balanced budget, tries to set a course that can be followed. The Clinton approach doesn't. Clinton does well enough in the polls when voters are asked about Republican proposals. But in the electoral endgame 11 months from now, voters will be asking what both parties will do, and for that Clinton has no clear answers--or perhaps too many. Democrats will be asked whether they plan to increase taxes again, as they did in 1990 and 1993. They will be asked why they will let Medicare spending soar when other medical cost increases are slowing. They will be asked, as one prominent Democrat already reports being asked on the stump, whether they will resuscitate Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan.
Clinton might like to prepare for re-election as Richard Nixon did: by increasing federal spending, inflating the currency to gas up the economy and vastly increasing Social Security benefits. (He has flirted with one Nixon tactic, stonewalling to conceal evidence of scandal.) But the Republican Congress, fiscal realities and, even more, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan won't let presidents buy elections the old-fashioned way.
Twenty five years ago, we lived in a debtors' world in which inflation, Keynesian economics and government policies encouraged politicians to spend their way to victory. Today we live in a creditors' world, in which politicians can spend only at rates the bond market and Greenspan allow. In a debtors' world, it was possible for governments to redistribute incomes; the biggest moves toward more equal incomes in American history came during that debt-financed enterprise, World War II. In today's world, voters will not allow tax increases, international markets will not allow bigger budget deficits and international competition will not allow unions or governments to mandate high wages for low-value-added work. So in 1993 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House, the move toward less egalitarian income distribution, if anything, accelerated.
Disarray does not work for a president. And a policy that cannot be sustained over the long run does not work for a political party. The long-term prospects for maintaining the status quo on Medicare and Social Security are zero: If growth rates are not cut modestly now, benefits will have to be cut deeply in the not-too-distant future. Nixon bought his 1972 re-election at an exorbitant price--recession, high inflation, a Congress committed to goals most Republicans abhorred. If Clinton's current tactics win for him in 1996, his party and the country may pay a similar price.
This story appears in the January 8, 1996 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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