By Matthew Cooper; Gloria Borger; Steven V. Roberts; Tim Zimmermann
Ever since November's Republican landslide, President Clinton has been, in the words of one aide, "processing the information" of his party's devastating defeat. He thought about it last week, friends say, as he hit golf balls by himself at the Army-Navy Country Club. He thought about it on a grueling 24-hour trip to Europe; indeed, aboard Air Force One, Clinton pumped congressional Democrats for their thoughts.
By midweek, with a Times Mirror poll showing that 66 percent of all Democrats want someone to challenge him in 1996, his respected Treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, headed home to Texas and the Whitewater investigation back in the headlines, the president had a stormy Oval Office session with members of the Democratic Leadership Council, the group of moderates he once headed. They had come bearing unpleasant advice: Move to the right and fire some key members of your staff. "With all due respect to George, who works very hard, there have to be changes," said Oklahoma Rep. Dave McCurdy, nodding to Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos.
Later that night, in a speech to the DLC, Clinton finally descended from the mountain. He tossed out his speechwriters' text and did not run his speech by his spouse. Instead, he declared that the American people are angry because their incomes are stagnant and Washington is not changing fast enough. The solution, Clinton said, is not to apologize but to fight for the middle class. "Can we get them back?" asked the president. "You bet we can."
That remains to be seen. Five weeks after their landslide victory, Congress's energetic Republican leaders have seized the initiative on almost every front, from restructuring Congress to welfare reform. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are still squabbling with the administration over ideology, politics and policies. One longtime friend sadly compares Clinton to the string of indecisive Union generals who were outmaneuvered and outfought by Robert E. Lee's smaller Confederate armies in the Civil War. "We need Stonewall Jackson, and what we have is George McClellan," says the friend.
Many forces beyond Clinton's control, including the end of the cold war, the voters' anti-Washington mood, the federal budget deficit, the global economy and the decline of the Democratic Party have eroded the once imperial presidency. "Today, I think it's hell to be president," says historian James MacGregor Burns. "The cold war structured things for a president and gave it order. ... You used to have Republicans and Democrats. Now, the loyalties shift so fast."
But Clinton often seems reluctant to use the enormous power that remains at his disposal. Perhaps, says one close friend, that is in part because Clinton "likes popularity more than power." And when the president has chosen to stand and fight, this friend observes, it's usually for a cause like health care reform, championed by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
His administration's accomplishments in promoting economic growth and negotiating foreign-trade agreements may help Clinton rebound. And in an attempt to halt the Republican tide and to convince disaffected voters that there is a New Clinton who will champion the middle class, the president this week may announce plans to cut middle-class taxes, trim the budget and prune the federal government -- possibly eliminating a cabinet agency such as the Energy Department. And next month, he will convene a bipartisan summit on welfare reform. This week Clinton is likely to jet to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to welcome home returning troops from Haiti. The move is meant to bolster Clinton's foreign-policy credentials and to tweak Sen. Jesse Helms, who quipped that the president would need a "bodyguard" if he visited the state.
But a photo opportunity will not easily upstage the runaway Republicans -- and a congressional entitlements commission that this week may recommend radical changes in the Social Security system (story, Page 60). Any plan bold enough to do so would require Clinton to make -- and enforce -- the kind of unpopular decisions he often has shrunk from in the past. During his first two years, he let congressional leaders talk him out of campaigns to cut congressional staffs and reform campaign financing; now, White House officials complain that many cabinet secretaries are "going native" on them, refusing to make cuts in their departments.
In an attempt at political jujitsu, Clinton will abandon his opposition to congressional term limits -- but only if they are applied to members of the new Republican-dominated Congress. And to add to the impression of beginning anew, Clinton will resort to the oldest of presidential gambits -- reshuffling and replacing bodies. Last week, he asked for -- and got -- the resignation of his controversial surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders (story, Page 31). Commerce Secretary Ron Brown is almost certain to leave his post next year to head Clinton's re-election campaign; his likely replacement is former White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty. A new agriculture secretary, CIA chief, party chairman and White House political director may come soon.
So far, the commotion is eerily reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's failed effort to turn his presidency around. To be sure, Clinton's tone this week won't be as self-pitying as the 1979 speech in which Carter blamed his misfortunes on the nation's spiritual malaise, but neither will Clinton offer a mea culpa for botched initiatives like his health care plan. But even a dramatic shift on some issues is unlikely to satisfy the public's deep doubts about Clinton's leadership. Among hisliabilities:
Moral authority. Questions about Clinton's character have undermined his power, and, unlike Richard Nixon, he has not always displayed an offsetting competence. The Whitewater scandal, which continues to gnaw at the moral authority of both the president and Hillary Clinton, is gathering steam again. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and incoming Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato of New York are pursuing both the original land and money deals in Arkansas and possible obstruction of justice charges against administration officials. The indictment last week of the Clintons' close friend, former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell, was not directly related to the Clintons' investments in a failed Arkansas real- estate scheme. But it brought the scandal closer than ever to the first couple.
Where's the majesty? Last week, outgoing House Speaker Tom Foley said Clinton suffers from "overexposure." The president is on television too much, said Foley, and the weight of his pronouncements is diminished. "We wish he were out there less," agrees a Clinton adviser. White House aides have tried repeatedly, so far with only modest success, to prune Clinton's schedule.
No fear. Clinton has not shown that he can punish enemies and reward friends. When Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby thumbed his nose at the administration's budget last year, it canceled some federal jobs in his state. The result? Shelby became a Republican after last month's election and was lionized at home.
Where is his center? All presidents shift positions. Abraham Lincoln lurched from tolerance of slavery to abolitionism; Franklin Roosevelt promised a balanced budget. But Lincoln's determination to preserve the Union and Roosevelt's to defeat the Depression and the Axis powers never wavered. Too many Americans don't know what Clinton's objectives are. "I think Clinton has to decide what he stands for and stand up and fight," says a leading congressional liberal appalled by the president's waffling on school prayer.
Clinton has long been known as a comeback kid. But in Newt Gingrich, he is confronting a conservative version of himself: an energetic orator and self-styled intellectual populist. So far, Gingrich has displayed some of Clinton's tendency to talk too much -- but none of the president's aversion to using power.
