On November 15, 1993 Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO charged that President Clinton, in his campaign to win approval of NAFTA, had "clearly abdicated his role as leader of the Democratic party." Such criticism by a major labor leader might have been sufficient to write the obituary of any Democratic president from FDR to Carter. According to most sources, however, we are witnessing not the death but the rebirth of the Clinton Presidency. For the first time in his Presidency Clinton has demonstrated a willingness to stand firm against powerful opposition and bend Congress to his will.
Conventional wisdom suggests that while Clinton's actions may have created some tension between the White House and organized labor, the tension will be relieved when Clinton returns to those issues where he is in fundamental agreement with the labor movement. The success of Clinton on NAFTA will enhance the image of his presidency, create renewed respect for Clinton among members of Congress and propel Clinton to victory on more traditional Democratic issues such as health care.
Organized labor, environmentalists, black leaders and other opponents of NAFTA are likely to become reconciled with Clinton, but Lane Kirkland's words are nonetheless instructive. Clinton claims to be a new Democrat, leading his country and his party to a bright future, but in order to be successful at that task he must come to grips with the forces that animate the old Democratic Party. The NAFTA vote is eloquent testimony to the difficulties involved in that task.
NAFTA was a Clinton victory but it was decidedly not a Democratic victory. Only 40 percent of House Democrats voted for NAFTA whereas an overwhelming majority of Republicans supported the president. This is not a great surprise. Although there are important Democrats who have supported free trade, as well as Republican isolationists such as Pat Buchanan, from the beginning NAFTA has been more closely associated with Republicans than Democrats.
No one expressed the reasons for this division better than Clinton: the supporters of NAFTA are the voices of hope, the opponents of NAFTA are the voices of fear. The opponents fear the future, they fear competition, and most of all they fear that any gains by others must come at their expense. For the opponents of NAFTA economics is about redistribution not production, about protecting one's piece of the pie, rather than making more and bigger pies.
The opponents of NAFTA should remind us of nothing so much as the populists of the late 19th century. This may seem a strange analogy. After all it was the populists who opposed high protective tariffs and supported free trade. But free trade was only a part of the populist agenda. The animating force of the populist agenda arose from a desire to protect the small farmer from the power of big business. People were being driven off their farms by changing economic circumstances. Big business was replacing agriculture as the dominant economic force in the country. The Populist attack on big business was based on the assumption that the growth of big business was responsible for the plight of the small farmer and that only by checking the power of big business could the small farmer be saved.
The populists were wrong then just as the opponents of NAFTA are wrong today. The plight of the small farmer was the product of increased productivity of all farmers. The number of farms was decreasing precisely because technology was increasing farm productivity. Agriculture was and is a major success story of the American economy, but a major part of that success is that the production of agricultural goods no longer requires massive amounts of labor. No one would suggest that we replace our tractors with horse drawn plows in order to recover the jobs that have been lost in the agricultural sector.
The story is the same today in manufacturing. The number of manufacturing jobs in this country has remained stagnant from the early 1970s to the present. But in that same period manufacturing output in the United States has doubled. This is not a sign of lack of competitiveness, but of the opposite. We have become more competitive, but that means in part that we produce more goods with less labor. Organized labor wants to protect manufacturing jobs, but the protection of jobs would mean a rejection of competitiveness and increased productivity, a policy that would surely lead to fewer jobs of any kind over the long run. The only way to overcome the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector is to find or create new markets for U.S. products and to shift the labor force into different types of jobs. Such changes entail risks, and risks are not popular with those who practice a politics of fear.
In the 1890s the Democratic Party was captured by the populists. In 1896 they nominated William Jennings Bryan and in so doing they identified themselves as the party of the past, the party that feared the future. They lost in 1896 and went on to nominate Bryan two more times, and to lose every presidential election until the Republican vote was split between Taft and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. But Bill Clinton is no William Jennings Bryan. He won in 1992, although that victory was in part made possible by a substantial defection of Republican voters to Ross Perot. Clinton campaigned as a new Democrat who would accept the challenge of the future rather than repeat the promises of the past. And, Clinton's support for NAFTA is the mark of a new Democrat who refuses to be trapped by the fears and dogmas of the old Democrats.
But if the NAFTA vote provides evidence that Clinton is a new Democrat, it provides even more striking evidence that the Democratic Party is still dominated by the politics of fear. In spite of a massive lobbying effort, the promises of pork, and most important of all the fear that a loss for Clinton on NAFTA would cripple the first Democratic president since Carter, only 40 percent of the Democrats were willing to vote yes on NAFTA. If we were to take away the pork, presidential persuasion and fear of presidential meltdown, how many Democratic votes for NAFTA would have remained? Where is the evidence for a new Democratic Party?
More to the point, where beyond NAFTA is there evidence that Clinton himself is a new Democrat? Let us briefly review the major issues of Clinton's first year in office. In addition to his NAFTA success Clinton has issued executive orders reversing the Reagan-Bush policy on abortion counseling, developed a new policy on gays in the military, and passed a family leave bill and a national service bill. With the possible exception of national service, each of these policies reflects old liberal Democratic dogma. There is nothing in these policies to make Clinton a new Democrat.
Clinton has, however, been willing to moderate his initial liberal policy preferences. For example, he unambiguously expressed his desire to end the ban on gays in the military, but when it came time to implement the policy Clinton had to engage in considerable backtracking to avoid a revolt in Congress.
The national service bill presents a more complicated case. Although the bill may be anathema to libertarians on the left and right, over the years a number of Republicans and Democrats have supported the idea of a national service bill. Clinton's initial proposal, however, was for the creation of a massive new entitlement program aimed less at encouraging national service than at creating a new financing scheme for higher education. Once again Clinton's policy inclinations were traditionally liberal. But also once again, Clinton retreated from his initial proposals. Responding to Congressional pressure Clinton accepted a bill that was greatly reduced in terms of scope and funding. One might be pleased that Clinton has been willing to moderate his initial liberal proposals, but one should not misunderstand this moderation. Clinton did not change his mind about his policy goals, he was merely unwilling to stand firm and fight when faced with pressure from various interest groups. In this respect Clinton combined two of the worst traits of the old Democrats—a reflexive commitment to liberal policies and a hypersensitivity to interest group pressure from any direction.
The appointments process has also been plagued by presidential inconsistency. Clinton's commitment to group representation led to one disaster after another in his choice of an Attorney General. It was obvious that Clinton was focusing on gender first and other qualifications second, and the shortcomings of such an approach became equally obvious. His desire to appease various interest groups in the selection of a Supreme Court Justice almost distracted him from the politically successful nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg was an obvious frontrunner for the position, but her willingness to suggest that there might be problems with the legal reasoning of Roe v. Wade moved her off of the short list. Ginsburg is no conservative, but her case showed that any break with liberal articles of faith could be damning. Only after the nomination process bogged down, and it appeared that Clinton might even be reduced to nominating a white male for the Court was Ginsburg rehabilitated.
On foreign policy Clinton has been rightly praised for his steadfast support for Boris Yeltsin, but in every other area of foreign policy Clinton has shown the contradictions involved in a Carter-like belief in an abstract notion of human rights and a liberal reluctance to make a sustained commitment of American forces. He blames Bush for not acting in Bosnia, but his own lack of resolve was so obvious he could not garner support from the Europeans who have a direct interest in the conflict. He unquestioningly accepted the U.N. Secretary-General's call to shift efforts from food distribution to nation building in Somalia, and when the difficulty of such a task became obvious he scrambled to find a way out that would cover the fact that he had made a commitment that he was not prepared to honor.
During the campaign he was indignant over Bush's callous treatment of Haitian refugees, but when in office he soon recognized that Bush's policy was the only practical one. Nonetheless he made the equally impractical promise that he would return Aristide to power, only to be surprised that virtually unarmed American military personnel would not be able to accomplish the task. His problems in foreign policy thus mirror his problems in domestic policy. A combination of a commitment to abstract liberal principles and a hypersensitivity to political pressure do not make for a sound policy and they do not make a new Democrat. They merely reflect the worst of the old Democratic party.
Nowhere does this fact become more obvious than on the two issues that will make or break Clinton's presidency in the long run—the economy and health care. Clinton's deficit reduction program is certainly less significant than he claims. Although Clinton says it will reduce the deficit, the reductions are based on an artificially high estimate of the future deficits. The fact is that according to Clinton's own estimates the deficit will remain at virtually the same level over the next five years.
Clinton's supporters claim that Clinton at least had the courage to take on special interests in the budget, but little about the budget supports that claim. Other than defense there are few cuts in major programs. The major deficit reduction comes from a $246 billion tax increase, an idea we didn't need new Democrats to develop. Moreover, the budget actually proposes spending $74.9 billion on new programs. The budget might have been worse. The economic stimulus package and the more extensive energy tax proposed by Clinton might have become law if Clinton had been a more effective legislative leader. But whatever small amount of moderation we find in the final budget, it can hardly be attributed to Clinton's vision as a new Democrat.
It is hard to see health care as the issue on which Clinton will establish his break with the policies of the past. From the symbolism of a national health care card to the substance of a massive new program that will bring at least 1/6th of the U.S. economy under the management of the federal government, Clinton's health care proposals harken to the entitlement philosophy that is at the core of the old Democratic party.
What most of Clinton's policies have in common is that they reflect the very values Clinton rejected in the debate over NAFTA. They represent an appeal to the fears and insecurities of the American people. Only massive government efforts can save you from the indifferent or sinister forces that control your lives. You must be protected from those forces, because you are powerless as an individual to deal with them. But such protection comes at a cost, a cost of greater dependency, of less freedom. Higher taxes mean that government will have more say and individuals will have less say over the way the money they earn will be spent. Managed health care means that in addition to dealing with doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, you would also have to take into account limits imposed by a government bureaucracy in making decisions about your health care.
People turn to government out of fear, and sometimes those fears are legitimate. Sometimes people need protection. But Clinton's policies are based on the belief that fear is the dominant force in American politics today. In this respect Bill Clinton and Ross Perot represent the same side in American politics. They believe that they can lead people to accept even welcome government protection if they can tap into their fears.
There is one important difference between Clinton and Perot. For Perot the deepest fears of the American people are fears of foreigners taking their jobs. He wants to protect us from people in other countries who do not share our aspirations or our values, from people whom he claims aspire only to having an outhouse. To his credit Clinton rejects such ignoble fears.
At the same time, Clinton is more than willing to play on other fears that are just as distasteful. He is willing to play the politics of race, gender, and class in order to build political support. When he suggests that New Yorkers who fail to vote for Dinkins are racists, when he attacks those with different views on civil rights or social welfare policy as racists, when he appeals to groups on the basis of their status as victims, when members of his administration describe religious leaders as prejudiced or dogmatic because they dare to hold values different from the Democratic party, when he speaks of the evil people who prospered in the eighties, Clinton is appealing to the same politics of fear he finds so repugnant in Ross Perot.
The Democratic party has increasingly become a Congressional party, a party that bases its claim to rule on its ability to provide government protection for the special interests created by the welfare state. The success of that party is based on its ability to convince the American people that security can only be found at the end of a government program. Individuals are told that they cannot possibly hope to deal with the world without the help and protection of government. They are told to find virtue in victimization and moral depravity lurking behind traditional success stories.
Clinton ran as the candidate from Hope, but to be a president who offers hope, he would have to reject many of the premises underlying the old Democratic party. He would have to reject the politics of fear and division. He would have to develop a domestic policy agenda that was based on the values he championed in NAFTA, a domestic policy that would celebrate the ability of individuals to compete, to become independent, and to cast off those fears that they are the victims of others.
All successful presidents have practiced the politics of hope, but for Clinton to do so he would have to risk the continued displeasure of Lane Kirkland and many other old Democrats. He would have to openly and honestly abdicate his claim as leader of the old Democratic party. But I suspect we will find that Clinton's fear of losing the support of old Democrats is greater than his hope for building a new majority coalition.
