These are tough days for Democrats.
A lot of commentators are blowing taps for the party’s prospects as scandal swirls up around the sleazy way Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- N.Y.) departed the White House.
But, if you take away the Clintons, Democrats nationally are in great shape. All they need to do is, one, put the Clintons behind them and, two, rediscover their party’s soul.
That first task is already in progress. The Clintons’ usual enemies have been able to sit back and smirk recently while former Clinton supporters line up to rip into the pardons Clinton granted and the gifts that he and his wife received from wealthy well-wishers. We who defended the Clintons’ basic right to be presumed innocent appear to have become unintentional co-dependents in their horribly corrupt habits.
Well, the days of co-dependency are over. Tough love has evolved into outright disgust. Only 22 percent of New York state voters thought Hillary Clinton was doing a “good job,” according to a poll released last weekend by Zogby International. That’s equal to Richard M. Nixon’s approval ratings at the time of his resignation, says pollster John Zogby.
But, cheer up, Democrats. Sen. Clinton has a six-year term in which to work on redeeming herself. Otherwise, you’re looking good. Your presidential candidate, Al Gore, received a half million more votes than the current President Bush did, despite Gore’s wooden delivery. That counts for something, even if the votes were conspicuously concentrated on both coasts and the rust-belt industrial states around the Great Lakes.
Democrats control exactly half of the Senate and close to half of the House. Democrats still have a very good chance to retake Congress in 2002 and the White House in 2004, if they make the right moves and promote the right message.
Democrats need to distance themselves from Bill Clinton, but not from his legacy of political and economic success. His message won two elections despite widespread misgivings about his personal moral compass and that of his wife.
Democrats can be proud of their record on economic prosperity, welfare reform, environmental improvements and civil rights protections during the Clinton years. Each continues to be an important organizing principle for the party. Each provides the basis for the new majority the party wants to build.
The Clintons’ recent scandals have given Bush an unusually long honeymoon, but the Clintons eventually must fade into the background. Increasingly the new president, his programs and his promises must be judged on their own merits.
Bush’s effective pitch for “compassionate conservatism” to “leave no child behind” recognizes a widespread American desire to have government do things to help people. That service-oriented role for government long has been a Democratic strength.
People want secure jobs, better schools, safer streets, adequate health insurance and quality day care. How those benefits can best be delivered should be the beginning of a healthy debate on the role of government, not the end of it.
Bush’s tax-cut bonanza for upper-bracket income earners already is running up against widespread concerns in both parties about the health and survival of popular programs, whether it is Head Start funding at one end of the political spectrum or military pay at the other.
Bush says we must have a tax cut because “It’s your money.” That’s true. It is our money. But, as Bill Clinton reminded everyone as he tried to woo Ross Perot voters in 1992, it is our debt, too.
For most of us in our daily lives, fiscal responsibility means that we pay our bills on time. Such fiscal prudence used to be called “conservative.” Now we hear good conservatives arguing that it is moral to return that money to taxpayers while the debt festers a while longer.
Clinton moved his party to the political center on economic issues. Democrats have little reason to abandon that winning position now.
The election of fund-raising wizard Terry McAuliffe to head the Democratic National Committee indicates that national Democratic leaders think they have the right message already. They only need, in their view, to raise enough money to get that message out.
But all politics is local, as the late Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill said. It is also personal. Clinton showed how effective a politician can be when he knows how to reach out and touch the public–unless he takes their wallets while he’s doing it.
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