William Jefferson Clinton was home, and he was free, and yet he was burdened as never before. At 50, young by the standards of national leadership, he had become the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win two terms. He came agonizingly close to a goal that had obsessed him for four years: winning a majority of the popular vote. He was full of joy, exhaustion-and, perhaps, a trace of fear. The scene was splendid, even triumphalist: a long red carpet behind the podium, a night sky laced with fireworks. But his speech was curiously flat. A man whose entire adult life had been defined by running was finally standing still. Now he faces a daunting liberation. He is free to be who he really is. If he knows. And if he can tell us.
Clinton must face sobering facts. He has no second-term “mandate.” His campaign was too careful, too intent on mere victory, to ask for one. He swept the country, easily defeating Republican Bob Dole and independent Ross Perot. But the president did so by emphasizing what he opposed (Republican “cuts” in Medicare and school loans) rather than what he was for (“targeted” tax credits and expanded family leave). His caution left a void that Republicans will fill with congressional subpoenas and new investigations of scandal in his administration.
Clinton won a second chance, but so did the GOP Congress, the first to maintain its majority since 1928. Far from chastened by Clinton’s victory, Republicans may be emboldened by their own survival. The Democrats spent millions trying to scare the voters about Newt Gingrich’s “extremist” hordes. But the GOP retained control of the House by a margin of as many as 17 seats–and the feisty Gingrich will return to the speaker’s chair. Republicans not only held control of the Senate; they increased their majority by at least one, to 54-46. The status quo symmetry of the outcome was clear: Clinton and Gingrich have been re-elected to keep an eye on each other.
In Little Rock, the president called on Americans to march forward, united, across his now familiar bridge. But what marching orders will he issue? Is he the statist liberal of his first, contentious years in office–or the Eisenhower Republican he has been since then? There is evidence on both sides. He declared that the “era of big government” is over, and won by running as a budget-balancing cultural conservative. Yet he vowed to save the middle-class welfare state, and Democrats in Congress will demand he do so.
Still, the president had the right to savor his accomplishment. Two years ago he was reviled in Washington, pilloried by Gingrich, the GOP and the press. With 96 percent of precincts in, he had won 49 percent of the popular vote, compared with 41 for Dole and 8 for Perot. But he won a whopping 879 electoral votes, to Dole’s 159.
But it was all too easy, almost eerily so. The president’s last solo press conference was 11 months ago. He was never pressed by valiant but woebegone Dole. Clinton wasn’t forced to answer tough questions about his record or his agenda. Now he has to. Entitlement spending is rampant, and must be curtailed. The corrupt financing of politics must be cleaned up. He must avoid the loss of momentum that is endemic to all second terms. And he must meet these challenges while coping with Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who is scrutinizing major administration figures, and could indict some.
Abroad, Clinton confronts a world in which war and dictatorship remain impervious to his vision of pacifying commercialism. He wasn’t frank about Bosnia, where U.S. troops are likely to remain after what was supposed to be a December deadline for withdrawal. He has staked relations with Russia on Boris Yeltsin, who survived a heart-bypass operation this week, but whose health–both physical and political-could still fail. China’s aging totalitarians are not only militaristic but mercantilistic, determined to press every advantage in arms and trade.
Clinton must lead a country that settled for the status quo, but is clearly unhappy with the nature of politics itself. The parties have turned themselves into ideologically vacuous cash sumps, collecting vast donations. Meanwhile, so-called “independent” spending by interest groups–ranging from the AFL-CIO to the NRA–mounted relentlessly negative ad campaigns. The scare tactics didn’t work: most incumbents, branded “extremists” or “liberals,” won. But the foul atmosphere had an impact. Turnout was a mere 49 percent, the lowest rate since before World War H.
When a president runs for re-election, he’s supposedly the only “incumbent” who matters. But this year the GOP Congress was on trial, too. It endured, but has no mandate, either. Republicans made no sweeping declarations, promising only to ensure Clinton was not issued a “blank check.” That was enough. In the House of Representatives, only about a dozen of the 70 GOP freshmen lost. In the Senate, incumbents thought to be in danger, among them Jesse Helms of North Carolina, came through, and the party took Democratic seats in Nebraska, Alabama and Arkansas.
The Republicans’ victories on the Hill made Dole’s own defeat that much more stinging. He never seemed quite sure why he wanted to be president, or to know how to explain why the country needed him to be. After trying to sell tax cuts, he went with what the news had given him: an opening to attack Clinton created by stories about foreign cash pouring into the Democrats’ campaign. Gerald Ford and George Bush were at Dole’s side as the end neared. Together, unintentionally, they formed the picture of a fading generation: a trio of World War II vets lamenting a lost America.
Something may indeed have been lost in this election: the concept of president as paragon. The ideal had been fading since the ’60s, and now a man who came of age in that decade seems to have buried it, at least for now. Asked in exit polls if they think Clinton is “honest,” 54 percent answered “no.” When asked if he was telling the truth about Whitewater, 59 percent said “no.” But character didn’t matter-or didn’t matter enough. Americans, it seems, weren’t looking for inspiration, but for a county executive writ large.
On election night, Clinton preached a message of national unity. But his victory was anchored in just one side of the cultural divide. The centers of Democratic power are urban, multicultural, feminine, secular: the America of the West Coast and Northeast. These were Clinton’s strengths. He won much of both coasts, 54 percent of the female vote and 88 percent of the black vote. But he was persona non grata in GOP strongholds: white, male .and evangelical, the America of the New South and the Old West. Dole won most of these regions, 50 percent of the white male vote and 65 percent of those who call themselves born-again Christians. At the polls, New York and Hollywood again beat Dallas and Branson.
Clinton may not have a sweeping agenda, but his friends insist he has a vision: an America that leads the world in educating its people to win the war of world trade. The trade pacts Clinton pushed through Congress were the signature accomplishments of his first term. Now he wants to enact education tax credits and deductions that would help underwrite at least two years of college for all Americans.
To reach even those relatively modest goals, Clinton will have to pick his way through a mine field laid by independent counsel Starr. He is examining Whitewater, the FBI files, the White House Travel Office firings. The sexual-harassment suit by Paula Jones is still pending; the president could be forced to give a public deposition while in office. And there may soon be yet another special prosecutor, this one to investigate the connection between Indonesian money and access to the administration.
So the contours of the next campaign are clear: an anti-scandal crusade against the Republicans, investigators and the courts. The president’s allies are preparing a full-scale counterattack, accusing Starr of rancorous partisanship. “It’s a political prosecution and it deserves a political response,” fumes James Carville, a former consultant who maintains close ties to the president and the First Lady. Carville says that he’s considering starting a group to spread the anti-Starr word using faxes, newspaper’ ads and other “war room” techniques.
Meanwhile, Clinton himself, who will never face the voters again, must figure out what to do with his newfound political freedom. He’s not always at his best in “transitions.” The one in 1992 was a disaster. After he won his first term, he wasted precious weeks fiddling with the makeup of his cabinet, and decided to give up on reforming campaign-spending laws after a dinner in Little Rock with Democratic congressional leaders. This time, he’s expected to quickly reshape his staff and cabinet–and claims to be eager for election reform.
Above all, Clinton must decide what he wants to see in the mirror of history. He may have an unprecedented chance to look. He will be the youngest man to serve a second term since Theodore Roosevelt–and when he leaves office he will be the youngest former president since TR. Clinton will able to watch as the judgment of history is rendered. What will it be? At a small dinner party in Washington last year, he expressed his admiration for FDR. Wistfully, he said he was jealous of the parlous times in which FDR had been asked to lead. America in the ’90s doesn’t seem to offer such dramatic opportunities for greatness. Perhaps that’s just as well. Americans will be grateful enough if he finally proves that he is a leader we can believe.
