Bill Clinton recently gave demoralized White House staffers a pep talk. He told them that he was not the first president to be excoriated for being an "agent of change" or to have his character assailed by his enemies. Thomas Jefferson, Clinton explained, was denounced for "radical ideas" such as a belief in the rights of the common man and was accused of having an illicit relationship with a slave. Abraham Lincoln was attacked in vicious, personal terms throughout the Civil War, and even his Gettysburg address was dismissed as pedestrian and silly. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were demonized by their opponents for expanding government activism to solve society's problems. Yet every one of those presidents, Clinton declared, was ultimately vindicated.
As his popularity drops and his agenda runs into increasing trouble on Capitol Hill, Clinton has been immersing himself in the trials of his predecessors, finding solace in their shared experiences. His summer reading has included Executive Privilege, a book by political scientist Mark Rozell that examines the problems presidents have had in maintaining secrecy. Another Clinton favorite: Out of Order by political scientist Thomas Patterson, which argues that recent presidents, including Clinton, have been unfairly savaged by the cynical news media.
But the lessons of history go only so far in explaining Clinton's predicament. His underlying problem is that he no longer strikes most Americans as a "new Democrat" seeking change -- which was his main selling point as a candidate. A new poll by ABC News, in fact, shows that 64 percent of the voters think Clinton has accomplished little or nothing as president, and 56 percent don't think he deserves a second term. Clinton's pliable presidency seems too cavalier about standards, too lax about keeping commitments. And even some Clinton loyalists say privately that there is considerable truth in those assessments. "Bill Clinton has not lived up to his promise as an agent of change," says a senior adviser. "He is in danger of becoming an incrementalist."
Clinton friends trace the genesis of his pliability problem to his experiences as governor of Arkansas. "Back home, we needed so much so fast that whatever he did was progress, and he did a lot in 12 years," says an old pal from Little Rock. "Now there are so many interests in Washington -- legitimate interests with different ideas -- that he can't do what he wants. He can't win everybody over. And he's frustrated that people don't congratulate him just for trying."
Part of his problem is impulsiveness. In an effort to get something done quickly, Clinton often will hastily bargain away so much that his original initiative loses its dramatic edge. During the campaign, he proposed a national service program to guarantee a college education to every American in exchange for a period of work in the community. The initiative caught the public's imagination. But under budget constraints, Clinton agreed to reduce the program, accepting only two years of limited aid for an estimated 100,000 people, and today the initiative hardly registers on the public's consciousness.
Partisan snipes. Similarly, his promise to end the "brain- dead politics of Washington" has evaporated in a sadly familiar burst of partisan bitterness and insider maneuvering on Capitol Hill. And his grand plan for health care reform, once portrayed as a holy war against greedy special interests by Hillary Rodham Clinton, is being torn apart on Capitol Hill. "The programs that he gets enacted almost always lose their strength and inspirational qualities in the end," says a prominent Democratic adviser. "When he proposes a big idea, he tends to portray it as a new public ethic -- and he probably believes that's what it is. But he gives up so much that every idea becomes just another government program."
One irony that Clinton's friends lament is that he has never been able to demonstrate his devotion to the moral idea on which they believe his commitment is firm -- civil rights. From his earliest days, his grandfather and his mother taught him to ignore a person's skin color. Old friends recall a verse from one of his favorite hymns in Baptist Sunday school: "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world." "Growing up," says Arkansas friend David Matthews, "he saw good, God-fearing, hard-working people treated badly just because they were born black. He would never compromise if he believed something would move the civil rights movement backwards."
That premise, however, has yet to be tested. Instead, Clinton's one confrontation on civil rights left many blacks dismayed and hardly showed his resolve on the issue. He got into a jam by nominating his friend Lani Guinier to head the Justice Department's civil rights division and then withdrew her name after critics denounced her as a "quota queen." Clinton said her writings on civil rights law did not jibe with his views.
A "desire to please." Those close to him say Clinton's tendency to surrender too easily and avoid confronting his adversaries can be traced to his childhood. Like many children with an abusive parent, he regularly pacified his alcoholic stepfather or ignored his drunken behavior rather than disrupt the family routine. When he did finally demand that his stepfather stop abusing the family, teen-age Bill was traumatized. "That's where he got his compelling desire to please," says a friend. "He won't choose sides. He will tell one person one thing in all earnestness, then tell the opposite to someone else, also in all earnestness. Not even his staff knows what position he is really committed to."
Just as important, for the first time in his public career Clinton must deal with competing ideas that are just as powerful, and in some cases more powerful, than his own. This severely limits his effectiveness. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to his agenda is Americans' hostility to government -- a mood that runs counter to Clinton's many plans to use government to fix problems. The president admits to aides that he greatly underestimated the depth of public cynicism toward Washington and hasn't figured out a way to reinstill a sense of optimism.
Further limiting his effectiveness, Clinton is dealing with organized interests -- ranging from the health-insurance industry to the National Rifle Association -- that are far more powerful and deeply entrenched than he ever imagined. "In Washington," says a Democratic strategist, "he's faced with many more big- league interests than he's ever seen before, and they know how to influence or gut legislation, and how to embarrass a president."
Undermining his ability to serve as an agent of change, Clinton has fallen under the thrall of Democratic congressional insiders, on whom he is relying to get his initiatives passed through accommodation and horse trading. "He got captured by the Washington-Capitol Hill Democratic Establishment," says Al From, head of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, "and until he breaks that yoke, he won't pull out of [his slide]." Yet Clinton's ties to congressional insiders keep growing, in part because friends keep falling by the wayside. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman was the latest to resign because of congressional criticisms that he'd misled lawmakers about his activities in the Whitewater investigation. As his problems mount, Clinton's friends have become concerned about his ability to escape the pressures of his job. But so far, he has found ways to maintain his psychological balance. One is spending time with old Arkansas pals such as Matthews, who recalls how much enjoyment the president found in taking him to the White House bowling alley not long ago. When the pins got stuck, Clinton took matters into his own hands. He trotted down the lane, got down on all fours and plunged his hands into the machinery to free the jam. Then he trotted back and the two got on with their game.
