By Kenneth T. Walsh; Susan Dentzer; Matthew Cooper; Ted Gest; Thomas Toch; Louise Lief
A week before the Calamity of '94, Bill Clinton sat down with his aides to analyze the nation's sour mood. The president conceded that voters were upset, but he doubted they were angry at him personally. He even chortled over the Republicans' "Clinton- clone" television ads, in which Democratic congressional candidates "morphed" into the embattled president. "The Republicans just can't help themselves," Clinton said. "They're so eager to run against me that they've got it all wrong. I'm not what this election is all about."
The president was fooling himself. His unpopularity hurt Democrats across the country, and exit polls showed that only 32 percent of the voters would support him in 1996. By the morning after Election Day, Clinton was morose. When an aide asked if he wanted to address the issue of congressional term limits -- which had been approved in seven states and the District of Columbia despite Clinton's opposition -- the president deadpanned: "They're looking better and better."
His senior advisers agree Clinton must re-launch his presidency, yet some refuse to believe things are as bad as they seem. "The Republicans will try to say this election is a repudiation of where the president is trying to take the country," says White House pollster Stanley Greenberg, "but I think this is a condemnation of the ugly process needed to bring about change. Voters have no confidence that either party knows where to take the country."
Hard choice. More important, Clinton has yet to make the fundamental decision that will make or break his presidency: whether to move decisively toward the political center by pursuing welfare reform and other moderate or conservative initiatives, or to appeal to liberal Democrats by pushing government-based approaches such as a renewed campaign for massive national health care reform, the approach still favored by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Typically, Clinton is sending mixed signals. "He sees value in all the options," says a senior White House adviser. "He'll probably pick and choose from all sides."
To help him plot his new course or courses, U.S. News has learned, Clinton may convene a bipartisan summit meeting of congressional leaders in the next few weeks to find out where the GOP is willing to compromise and where confrontation is unavoidable. The liberal approach would put him on a collision course with the new Republican majority but enable him to run against Congress, Harry Truman-style, in two years.
Meanwhile, Clinton's inner circle is deeply divided over economic priorities that must be addressed promptly. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, budget director Alice Rivlin, White House economic adviser Robert Rubin and, to some extent, Vice President Al Gore all want to emphasize deficit reduction, free trade and improving government efficiency. Others, including Labor Secretary Robert Reich, White House senior adviser George Stephanopoulos, economic adviser Laura Tyson and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, want to focus on helping the middle class, such as by providing more job training and other forms of education.
Beyond the economic issues, Clinton's staff has given him three general approaches to saving his presidency:
Bipartisanship. Under this scenario, Clinton would focus on a handful of reform initiatives -- probably welfare, health care and political reform -- and try to work with Republicans. "He has one option, and that's to start over," says Al From, head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
This approach probably can work -- for a while. Both sides will start on a bipartisan note later this month, when the Republicans are likely to vote for the Clinton-backed amendments to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that will liberalize world trade.
Then things will get dicey. One big problem is that Clinton has no prominent pipeline to the Republicans now that senior counselor David Gergen, an adviser to three GOP presidents, is leaving the administration. As a solution, Clinton is actively considering naming a Republican to the White House staff or the cabinet, perhaps to the soon-to-be vacant job of agriculture secretary.
But some White House aides fear that Clinton's initiatives would be dragged so far to the right by the House and Senate that they would become unrecognizable as Democratic ideas. Clinton, for example, wants a two-year limit on welfare, but also wants to pour money into job training, child care, health insurance and public-sector jobs for the hard-core unemployed. Many Republicans tend to see that approach as a waste of money and prefer shock treatment: cutting off welfare benefits after two years and severely limiting or eliminating benefits for women who get pregnant.
A nastier source of conflict will be the GOP's desire to embarrass the administration with oversight hearings on all manner of issues, including the Whitewater affair and the policies of liberal Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who supports condom distribution in public schools. Such hearings will tie up the overstressed White House staff.
Flying solo. Clinton also could try to end-run the Republican Congress. "Actually," says a senior White House official, "we don't have to go back to Congress for all that much in the next two years. We've already enacted our economic plan, and we've already got our tax increase on the wealthy. We have a crime bill. We have NAFTA" -- the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The White House staff is already searching for administrative actions Clinton can undertake without congressional approval. Now that his appointees have taken control of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, the president could authorize a wave of class-action lawsuits against employers for systemic discrimination. He is also being urged to press the Justice Department and other federal agencies to enforce civil rights laws more aggressively.
Another strategy under discussion, U.S. News has learned, is for Clinton to lead an anticrime crusade and encourage Americans to "take back the streets." No federal spending would be involved. Instead, Clinton would make a series of anticrime speeches and lead residents on marches through crime-ridden areas.
Foreign-policy president. Clinton plans to focus more than ever on international affairs, over which he has considerable presidential authority. This week he will meet with Asian leaders in Bogor, Indonesia, to discuss ways to enhance free trade. Next month, he will again emphasize free trade at a Latin American summit in Miami; his schedule includes a likely visit to U.S. troops in Haiti and a trip to discuss economic and security issues with European leaders in Budapest. And Clinton is expected to push Israel and Syria toward a peace treaty.
But there may be trouble ahead. Russia is toughening its stand toward the former Soviet republics and challenging American policies on the former Yugoslavia, on Iraq and Iran and on expanding the NATO alliance to include some of the former U.S.S.R.'s satellites. In response, the administration is abandoning its Russia-first line.
Even so, led by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, probable chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican conservatives in Congress are likely to complain that the administration was soft on Russia from the start. Last week, Helms faulted Clinton for sending troops to Haiti instead of invading Cuba to oust Fidel Castro.
Personnel changes will give Helms and other Republicans more chances to scrutinize Clinton's foreign policy. Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey is expected to leave at the end of the year, according to administration officials, and the leading candidate to replace him is said to be Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch.
Clinton tells friends that last week's defeat reminds him of his 19
