Is the President Impotent?
The pragmatist's case
against President Clinton--as opposed to the moralist's--is premised on the
notion that he's powerless, so disgraced and mistrusted that his presidency is
finished politically if not chronologically. But a peculiar little side drama
on Capitol Hill suggests that this conclusion is not as certain as it seems. It
offers evidence that Clinton's Flytrap weakness can be, in at least one small
case, a perverse source of strength.
The drama
concerns one of Washington, D.C.'s dreariest annual rituals, the appropriations
process. Every September, Congress squabbles over the 13 annual spending bills
needed to keep the government operating. Every year, House Republicans strip
funding from favorite Clinton programs and lard the bills with anti-abortion
and anti-environmental riders. As the end of each fiscal year looms with no
agreement between Congress and the president, conflict escalates, and the
president threatens vetoes. And every year, a last minute continuing resolution
prevents shutdown (or not, as in 1995-96), both sides make cosmetic
concessions, the bills move, and everyone goes home.
Same story this September. The fiscal year ends in two
weeks. Only one of 13 bills has passed, and Clinton is threatening to veto
seven of the unfinished ones. He objects that the Republicans would defund
education, the International Monetary Fund, summer jobs, and literacy programs
and that they have attached unacceptable language about abortion, the census,
and the environment. Does this mean we are headed for another shutdown?
No, and
the reasons reveal much about Flytrap game theory. At the mere mention of the
word "shutdown," the average Republican politician curls up in a ball on the
floor and blubbers. (One fretful GOP staffer I spoke to would refer only to
"the s-word.") The 1995-96 budget showdown and shutdown were, of course, a
nightmare for Republicans. Clinton demonized them, revived his own flagging
career, and guaranteed himself the 1996 presidential election. The memory still
traumatizes the GOP. (But Republicans may laugh last about that shutdown. It
was then, after all, that Clinton and Lewinsky began their affair.)
It is now an article of faith among
conservatives that Clinton wants another shutdown, that he will gin up a
spending fight to provoke one. Republicans fear that if he picks his issues
carefully--education or the environment, not the IMF (too foreign)--vetoes some
of the spending bills, and blocks a continuing resolution, he could galvanize
disaffected Democrats in Congress and distract voters from Flytrap. A
Washington Times op-ed piece last week called this Clinton's "domestic
... Wag the Dog strategy." Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House
Speaker Newt Gingrich have repeatedly hinted that Americans should not be
suckered by a Clinton-induced shutdown.
Republican worries are not far-fetched. Though a Democratic appropriations
committee spokeswoman and an Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman
dismiss the idea that Democrats want a shutdown, the White House and Hill
Democrats are clearly spoiling for a good fight. "Democrats want to talk about
anything besides Monica Lewinsky. They are looking forward to talking about
education," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. "Hill Democrats are urging
us to be tough," says a White House staffer. Democrats, who don't have much
else to campaign on, would welcome an appropriations riot. Tarring Republicans
as anti-education, anti-abortion polluters is a time-honored Democratic
election strategy.
The Republicans' dilemma is that they are, as always,
fiercely divided. Red-meat conservatives, who willfully refuse to learn from
their 1995 mistakes, yearn to boot Clinton when he's down. They loathe him. The
weaker he gets, the less they are willing to concede in appropriations. Leading
conservative Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., told Roll Call last month that
the GOP would "win" a shutdown if Clinton forced one, because Americans would
realize he was trying to distract them from Lewinsky. (They thought they would
"win" the last shutdown, too.)
Talk of
challenging Clinton alarms Republican leaders and moderates. Clinton is gushing
blood. Democratic congressional candidates are sinking. "Congressional
Republicans are judged in November. ... They are on a roll, and they don't need
to do anything that will jeopardize that roll," says congressional analyst Norm
Ornstein. And Flytrap makes other political jockeying especially foolhardy.
Republicans don't want to seem partisan or malicious now so they can
be partisan and malicious during the post-election Flytrap hearings.
So the result, weirdly, is a no-lose for
Clinton. If conservative Republicans are reckless enough to provoke an
appropriations showdown, Clinton will probably win the public relations war,
revive Democrats, and ward off Flytrap, exactly what Republicans fear most. If
the GOP doesn't provoke him, he'll be able to extract concessions in the
appropriations bills. The latter scenario is far more likely. Die-hard
conservatives are not numerous enough or suicidal enough to force a showdown.
Moderates and the leadership will prevail and give Clinton much of what he
wants. They will let the enfeebled president win now, the better to kill him
later. "They don't want to give us any chance to recover and distract from the
Starr report and unify us. So they'll cave," says a White House staffer. This,
I suppose, is politics: The GOP will happily concede the substance (money) to
win the symbolism.
A backdoor appropriations
victory is not exactly the strong-arming triumph a chief executive is supposed
to win over Congress. But for the Flytrapped president, it's better than
nothing.
