President Clinton had a busy week firing comets of his own making at his health-care reform proposal.
Talking to his pals in the National Governors’ Association in Boston last week, Clinton appeared to move away from his oft-stated commitment to universal health insurance coverage.
At least that was the screeching interpretation in the public prints and on Capitol Hill, where loyal Democrats such as Sens. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Paul Simon of Illinois were left gasping by Clinton’s equivocation.
“I want a universal program,” Clinton told the governors, “but we can’t physically get to 100 percent.”
In Washington, the president’s most ardent supporters on health care heard ice cracking. It’s a sound they’ve heard before in this presidency.
In Los Angeles, Republicans gathering for a semiannual meeting are cackling over Clinton’s latest misstep.
“He’s inching our way,” said Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, as if the Republican leader had a path to offer with his cynical and expedient health care “plan.”
Clinton’s problem has less to do with coverage than it does with credibility.
Through sins real and imagined, the president has cast himself as a man with a soft, gooey center. He sees himself as a negotiator, a conciliator, a post-modern politico who wants to solve problems without partisan rancor.
Millions of Americans, many of whom voted for Clinton and some who still admire his ambitious domestic agenda, see him as a pushover.
What happened in Boston? A literal reading of Clinton’s remarks to the governors suggests the president didn’t stray far from his earlier pronouncements.
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In fact, few advocates on any side of the debate think 100 percent coverage is possible.
Even in Hawaii, which is the administration’s working model for universal coverage paid in part through mandated contributions from employers, only 93 percent of the population has health insurance.
No matter. Clinton has lost the ability to bargain in public, chiefly because it is too easy to believe that when he talks of negotiation he means to surrender.
From the docks in Haiti to the middle-class tax cut, from Bosnia to the Btu tax to Lani Guinier, Clinton has backed away too often from his stated positions.
He has been unwilling or unable to demonstrate what it is he will not hand over as a negotiating point.
His wish to have it all ways, to have his rhetoric and good intentions confirmed by friends and enemies alike has crippled his presidency.
An upside-down Machiavelli, Clinton forgives his enemies, mostly, and ignores his friends. For example, he was tireless in helping Republicans and the Wall Street Democrats inside his administration push the North American Free Trade Agreement.
NAFTA might be enlightened trade policy, but all it earned Clinton from his Republican amigos was contempt, as the current health-care fight demonstrates.
Earlier this month, however, Clinton was absent without leave when his friends in organized labor, who bankroll Democratic campaigns and back his health-care plan, watched the striker-replacement bill die in the Senate.
Is this all some grim flaw in the presidential character?
Well, as a Democrat, Clinton is not a member of an organized political party, to steal a line from Mr. Dooley.
Congressional Democrats, and others, feel no need to restrain themselves when offering public advice to the president. When in doubt, they bash him with impunity, understanding they’ll still get the federal money or the overnight visit to the Lincoln bedroom.
Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago ripped Clinton for allegedly spending too much time on health care and not enough on crime. Why not? Daley understands that Clinton will take the hit and keep smiling.
Then there is the particular matter of retooling the nation’s health-care system, and the organized resistance to that effort.
The private Center for Public Integrity reports that in the last two years, groups with an interest in health and insurance legislation have kicked in $25 million in congressional campaign contributions.
They’ve sponsored $50 million in television ads aimed at steering the health-care debate.
All sides were represented in that legalized influence-peddling, but the breadth of the effort demonstrates what Clinton is up against, and why he might be searching for an advantage.
Clinton understands, as the public should, that there will be no health-care reform and no insurance reform in Congress next year.
Democratic advantages in the House and Senate will be reduced, perhaps eliminated, this fall. Even in the best of November scenarios for Democrats, Clinton will have trouble patching together any sort of coalition for any meaningful domestic program in 1995.
Perhaps that’s the reason he was winking and nodding at the governors’ meeting, looking for an accommodation he can stomach.