TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072092/07209920.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 11.6 KB | 231 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 22

BILL CLINTON and AL GORE

Clinton's Second Chance


Fashioning an all-Southern, baby-boomer ticket and offering
a retooled economic program, the Democratic candidate readies
himself for a grueling, down-and-dirty fall campaign

By MICHAEL KRAMER


    Six months ago, he was dead. And then he was dead again.
And again. And again. And in the end, he may be politically
dead for real: more than half of all voters still harbor "major
doubts" about Bill Clinton's character and values. But for now,
Clinton is The Man. His hapless primary competitors, the
cowardice of others who shied from the fight, and his own dogged
(and at times ruthless) determination conspired to have Clinton
appear in the sweltering Arkansas sun last Thursday not only
alive and well -- his party's candidate for President -- but the
creator, almost literally, of another just like him. Nominate
one, get one free.

    So there they were, two perfectly coiffed, freshly
scrubbed, oh-so-earnest fortysomething white Baptist Southerners
in blue suits and ties, ignoring the sweat on their faces (as
did the adoring blond wives at their sides), two self-confident
moderates proclaiming themselves The Answer, The Change. They
will rescue us from our malaise, says Clinton, because Americans
don't really hate politics, we are just "fed up with failure"
-- and failure is decidedly not what these two survivors are
about. How could it be? Clinton and Gore lust for the pinnacle,
but their motives are pure: "I tell you truthfully," said Gore
with a straight face (the same Gore, by the way, who previously
derided as a "political dead end" the position he now covets),
"I didn't seek this . . . I didn't expect it. I'm here for one
simple reason: I love my country."

    A few hours later, slumped in a blue leather chair in the
Governor's mansion, Clinton told TIME (in a rare display of
introspection) that while he knows a great deal about an awful
lot, what he knows best of all is how lucky he is. "In effect,"
Clinton said, "I'm being given a chance to start again," an
opportunity he is determined not to blow, a possibility
confirmed by a dramatic increase in the number of people who now
say Clinton is "trustworthy" enough to be President (from only
39% in April to 58% today).

    The state of play could be quite different. Clinton could
be 20, even 30, points ahead of George Bush; the President
could be considering life after defeat; and Ross Perot could be
doing whatever it is that makes a self-described "world class"
businessman world class. The nation's economy is growing at the
slowest rate since World War II; the recession from hell is
claiming those who never heard of unemployment benefits; more
people than ever before say the country is on the "wrong track";
and Bush, if he has a clue, is keeping it secret. Clinton
should be planning the transition but, as he says, "the politics
of personal destruction have been proved very effective."

    It is a measure of Clinton's fortitude that he is even
within striking distance. His equanimity in the face of charges
that have driven others to retirement is almost superhuman. But
here he is, the nominee, able to peruse a long list of
vice-presidential possibilities before deciding to clone himself
-- and to find an even better, or at least less hobbled, version
of himself at that. But for a certain arrogance and a definite
slickness, Al Gore is Clinton without flaws, the first
expression of Clinton's second chance.

    "Do no harm" is the first rule of vice-presidential
selection. "A running mate may not help you," Richard Nixon once
said, "but he can certainly hurt you." Gore will appeal in the
South and to environmentalists, say the talking points Clinton's
aides distributed to the faithful last Friday. Gore's support
for the Persian Gulf war will reassure Reagan Democrats. Gore's
Ozzie-and-Harriet marriage and his wife's crusade against rock
lyrics will add some much needed "family values" points to the
ticket. Above all -- it is the No. 1 talking point after the
obligatory assertion that Gore could succeed Clinton without
missing a beat -- Gore represents John Kennedy's earlier claim
that the "torch has been passed to a new generation" -- and this
much, at least, is certainly true. Clinton and Gore are the baby
boomers (two of almost 80 million) taking on the last of the
World War II-era leadership cadre -- which has enjoyed an
uninterrupted run from that conflict's supreme commander for
Europe (Eisenhower) to its youngest naval aviator (Bush). But
crowing about the "generational thing" is little more than an
obvious way of playing the cards that Clinton dealt himself. Had
he chosen Lee Hamilton, as seemed likely for a while, the
Clintonians' spin would have pushed regional balance,
foreign-policy experience and aged wisdom. The fact is, the only
problem Clinton had to avoid was a post-selection examination
that could find his No. 2 wanting. With Gore, the chances for
such a disaster are minimized. He is, as the ticket's pollster
says, a "prudent" choice. Having run for President himself four
years ago, Gore comes to the '92 race pre-scrutinized. He could
turn people off (he can bore and appear obsequious, and
sanctimony is often his stock in trade), but Al Gore will not
embarrass.

    As Clinton recasts his campaign for the fall, his
selection of Gore is only one of several significant moves. The
easiest, this week's convention, will be over in a flash. In
days that some can still recall, national-party conventions
witnessed the heaviest lifting; party bosses actually selected
the candidates. Today conventions are little more than
nationally televised pep rallies, quickly forgotten junkets that
can nevertheless doom a candidate's chances if they deteriorate
into party-wrecking brawls. The TV exposure routinely provides
the ticket a temporary bounce (4 points in the polls, on
average), but the lingering memory of an unseemly tussle can
cause voters to conclude that a candidate who can't control even
a meaningless event cannot be trusted with big power.

    To assure that no such perception takes hold, Clinton has
already done much. He has striven mightily to calm the
Democrats' traditional battles: crafty negotiating has held
platform fights to a minimum; a fair amount of begging secured
Mario Cuomo's participation as nominator; and -- no small matter
-- Clinton's handling of Jesse Jackson, while dampening minority
enthusiasm (at least for now), has undoubtedly aided his desire
to reach for the center, which, after all, is where the votes
are. But there is more to do. A harmonious conclave can leave
fat cats smiling and help dent the campaign's $4 million debt.
And if Clinton avoids a litany of policy prescriptions in favor
of an evocative recitation of his life story, his acceptance
speech can kick off the general election campaign in a positive
light few would have dreamed possible last February.

    Of perhaps greater importance is Clinton's latest economic
plan -- the third, if anyone's counting. In broad strokes,
Clinton has changed his priorities dramatically. He used to
emphasize deficit reduction and tax breaks for the middle class,
but now considers "investment" the key to economic growth.
Unfortunately, since everything he does and says should be
geared toward repressing the conclusion that he is too slick for
high office, Clinton is still loath to confess the change. He
continues to deny the obvious; his advocacy of a middle-class
tax-rate cut was a sop to New Hampshire's strapped primary
voters, and his scaling back of that promise today merely
confirms a new and more sober political and economic stance for
the fall effort.

    The real reason for the new emphasis was stated by one of
Clinton's top economic advisers two weeks ago: "Once we got into
the numbers," said Harvard's Robert Reich, "once we saw what it
was going to require to develop a growth strategy . . .and
education ((reform)) and infrastructure -- you can't do it all,
you can't give everybody everything." Clinton could endorse
Reich's honest explanation, but he won't. Against the evidence,
he protests that he scaled back his middle-class tax-rate cut
because of a worsening deficit. In fact, between the appearance
of the tax-cut notion last winter and its truncation three weeks
ago, the numbers changed hardly at all. And it was he, not the
media and his rivals, who made "too much" of the idea. Tax
relief for the middle class was the centerpiece of Clinton's
first economic plan and a staple of his early stump speeches and
TV commercials.

    Despite the discomfort Clinton shows when challenged on
such matters, his new economic plan is, on balance, both wiser
and more promising than his earlier efforts and a far sight
better than the Administration's proposals (as well as Ross
Perot's, of course, since Perot is 10 days beyond his own
deadline for getting real on the issues). Clinton still won't
seriously tackle the spiraling cost of entitlement programs, and
his health-care reforms, which he identifies as the "key to
everything," require further work. But as his proposals are
elaborated, they could resonate with an electorate "fed up with
failure." And when the debates come this fall -- the events he
is counting on for victory, since all else in the campaign is
designed merely to keep him close in the polls -- Clinton alone
may be able to offer a coherent, optimistic future for a nation
apoplectic about decline.

    Which is not to say that the low road won't be traveled or
that George Bush and his surrogates will be the only attack
dogs in the race. "Every time somebody hits me," Clinton said
last winter, "I do my best to take their heads off. And it's
worked pretty well." Which is putting it mildly. During the
primaries, when Clinton seemed headed for oblivion, he struck
back viciously. When Paul Tsongas was gaining in Florida,
Clinton erroneously claimed that Tsongas favored cutting Social
Security benefits. When Jerry Brown emerged as the "anyone but
Clinton" alternative, Clinton said Brown opposed abortion, which
was simply untrue.

    Gore too will probably join the fray. He predicts a "long,
hard fight," and he proved in 1988 that he can give as good as
he gets. In fact, it was Mr. Straight himself who first struck
at the Massachusetts prison-furlough program, which the
Republicans then spun into the infamous Willie Horton
commercials. And now that the people who brought us Willie
Horton are back with a new anti-Clinton ad campaign, this
cycle's candidate is signaling clearly that he won't pull a
Dukakis and roll over without a fight. Clinton told TIME he is
"not surprised" by a 60-sec. spot that invites the curious to
call a number on the screen to "get to know Bill Clinton the way
Gennifer Flowers did." "This is the way the Republicans make a
living in national politics," says Clinton, who scornfully
dismisses the President's profession of innocence and Bush's
command that his troops lay off the "sleaze." "He could stop
this stuff . . . in a heartbeat," says Clinton.

    Not to worry, though, Clinton promises: he won't stoop. "I
don't want to get into the same thing they do," he says. But
others might, right? Right, says Clinton, alluding to the recent
Spy magazine article detailing the President's alleged
womanizing. "You know," he says, "when you live by the sword,
you have to be careful."

    Uh-huh. O.K. Enjoy the week -- and then sit back and
fasten your seatbelts. Revel in the sweetness and the wholesome
politics while you can. It won't last long.