Clinton's Real Character Issues

by Randolph T. Holhut

• Consigning a couple of million people to poverty, homelessness and hunger with a welfare "reform" law that ended the federal commitment to helping the nation's poor.

• Supporting legislation that undermines civil liberties in the name of "getting tough on crime," such as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

• Uncritically supporting a bloated military establishment that sees foreign policy problems as an opportunity to test weapons on our enemies and sell more of them to our friends.

• Helping to create "the best economy in a generation" by maintaining an economic policy where jobs and wage growth for average Americans are sacrificed so the Fortune 500 and bondholders can grow richer.

• Single-mindedly pursuing deficit reduction at the expense of social welfare and public infrastructure programs (since we allegedly can't afford spend money on that, while defense spending and corporate welfare remain budgetary sacred cows).

• Hollowing out the Endangered Species Act and continuing to allow the cut-rate sale or rental of federal lands and resources to those who can well afford to pay more.

• Selling out American workers with his unfailing support of measures such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization that allow corporations to roam the world freely in search of ever-higher profits.

The list is long of the various failings of President Clinton -- things that I consider more important than the failings of the flesh. But since sex sells and talking about economic inequality doesn't, the press prattles on about the various nuances and sub-plots of the Monica and Bill show.

As many did back in 1992, I gave Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt. Twelve years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush were enough. With Clinton, I thought there was a possibility of change. We heard something approaching an honest discussion of the problems facing our country. We now had a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in Congress ready to undo the damage of the Reagan-Bush years.

But I forgot the words of Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

The conservatives conceded nothing. Their obstructionism in the 103rd Congress and their vilification of President Clinton helped pave the way for the Republican majority in the 104th Congress; a majority they continued to hold in the 105th Congress.

Even worse, President Clinton repudiated the activist and liberal Democratic tradition of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. After five years, Clinton's record is barely distinguishable from that of George Bush. The lesser of two evils is still evil, and Clinton has given us a slightly moderated version of the Republican agenda.

All this happened while liberals stuck loyally by him, reflexively uttering the usual defense for Democrats who stray -- "if we criticize him, it only helps the Republicans." The liberals were seduced by the possibility of access, while failing to see how the President was selling them out at every turn.

When people talk about Clinton's lack of principles, I think of the way he caved on such issues as health care reform or allowing gays to serve openly in the military. The conservatives discovered in 1993 that the Clinton Administration would allow itself to be kicked around and not fight back. They discovered that Clinton -- a centrist who is quick to compromise -- would not take a strong, unequivocal stand on anything. The talk show demagogues and the Tory columnists could demonize Clinton and get away with it.

It must have been quite ironic to Newt Gingrich and the rest of the GOP extremists that they saved Clinton's political career. Their brazenness in 1995 in trying to dismantle the Federal government and rewrite its laws gave the President the perfect opportunity to make a stand as the sensible centrist trying to keep the barbarians from crashing through the gates. Now, Newt's Gang are going to be the ones who will allegedly uphold the Constitution when they try to impeach Clinton. The hypocrisy of this situation is boundless.

And that's why President Clinton still has substantial support as a leader, while still being seen as personally untrustworthy. The American people as a whole are not stupid or ill-informed. They could see that the Republican Congress needed to be checked, and that's why Clinton won a second term in 1996.

At the same time, they still don't trust Clinton, and that's why the GOP still controls Congress and may continue to do so after the 1998 elections. Unfortunately, this adds up to a federal government that has accomplished little except on behalf of the Fortune 500 firms that ladle out the campaign contributions that keep the circus going.

Theodore Roosevelt once said that "a great democracy must be progressive or else it will soon cease to be a great democracy." We are at a crossroads. Our problems have gotten too big to ignore.

The Cold War has ended, but we are still spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight an enemy that no longer exists. We have gone from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. We have the worst primary education system in the world, the world's most wasteful and inefficient health care system and have more of our citizens behind bars than in any other nation in the world. Our middle class is shrinking and the underclass is growing fast.

But nothing is happening, because of the lethal combination of a press obsessed with scandal, an opposition party obsessed with revenge and a president with no real core values and absolutely no backbone. Because of this, we find ourselves still waiting for the change we thought was going to come. And that is the true disappointment of the Clinton presidency.