Saturday November 23, 1996
Like A Phoenix From The Ashes…
by Craig Charney
How did Bill Clinton rise from the political dead after the Republican sweep of the
US Congress in 1994 to be re-elected In 1996? Craig Charney analyzes the reasons for his victory.
The factors usually mentioned — clever campaigning, a poll-minded
President, a weak opponent — all played a role, but they are not the
essential reasons. Clinton’s road to re-election was paved by the response
he evolved to the key challenge facing his country today, how to defend traditional
American values of opportunity, community, and security as their foundations
are eroding.
The same processes increasing competition and social insecurity
around the globe also have buffeted the world’s richest country, leaving
old liberal solutions like those of Clinton’s first two years in office
literally and intellectually bankrupt. However, in 1995, Clinton became the
defender of values and programs threatened by the Republican’s free-market
extremism, moving into a lead he never lost. He maintained it through a disciplined,
well-organized, and innovative campaign. His victory is really the victory
of what might be called the new “post-modern consensus” in American
politics: curb the welfare state, but help working families, balance the budget,
preserve the safety net, expect less of the state, but leverage its resources
to mobilize civil society.
Globalization affected Americans just as it has touched people
around the world. With the shift of manufacturing jobs abroad and the rise
of a service sector split between well-paid computer jockeys and poorly-paid
hamburger flippers, workers’ real wages slid and married women were drawn
into the workforce. Job opportunities and middle-class blacks fled the inner
city, destroying institutions that had held black communities together and
helping create a crime-prone underclass. Even in white families, squeezed
by the demands of work, family and community, something had to give—civic
involvement, time with the kids, often the marriage itself. While incomes
and employment picked up in the ‘90s, rising inequality created insecurity
about saving for long-term goals, creating the paradox of anxiety amid prosperity.
Yet the malaise which troubled Americans was as much moral as
economic. Its origins lay not just in objective factors, but in a backlash
against the values of the anti-Establishment ‘60s and the go-go ‘80s,
both of which exalted the individual over the community and indulgence over
responsibility. Its effects were seen in moral terms as well. Families were
threatened by demoralization, violence, and drugs. The ideals of owning one’s
home and retiring in security were in peril. Above all, the future of the
American dream that hard work and responsibility would ensure a better future
for the next generation—seemed increasingly in doubt. Reflecting these
views, surveys show that Americans are more anxious about the moral state
of their society than its economic condition.
Against this backdrop, the big-government liberal tradition
of the Democratic Party — including Bill Clinton in 1993-94 — was
increasingly irrelevant and unsustainable. It was irrelevant because its statist
nostrums (generous welfare benefits, state health insurance) did not speak
to the concerns about reproducing the family and balancing the budget with
welfare, senior citizens’ health care, and state pension entitlements.
It was politically unsustainable because ghetto women raising children on
welfare deeply offended working-class men and women struggling to feed and
raise their families. These concerns and this anger fueled the Republican
victory in 1994.
Yet rather than address the concerns of their constituents,
the victorious Republicans turned hard right, driven both by their own free-market
ideology and the business interests to whom they were beholden. They rashly
promised to balance the budget and cut taxes, which would have required large
cuts in health care, education, and almost all other government activities.
Simultaneously, they waged an onslaught on environmental, work place safety,
and other regulations which had won wide acceptance. Their response to the
challenge of the post-industrial society was radical: get the state out of
it.
In response, last year President Clinton — following his
own moderate instincts as well as his advisors — mad important compromises,
but held firm on what was essential to defend the values dear to Americans.
He accepted the balanced budget — but insisted on defending health and
retirement security. He agreed to the Republican bill imposing time limits
on welfare — but won billions more in child care and job training for
to prepare welfare recipients to take up job opportunities. The result was
a turnaround in the polls, with Clinton leading Bob Dole, his Republican challenger,
from August on.
This year, Clinton sought to define a second-term agenda, which
would advance the values and substantive concerns of the country. He pressed
for and won an increase in the minimum wage and a rating system to curb TV
violence, to promote educational opportunity, he proposed the right to two
years of free education beyond high school, and large tax breaks for university
beyond. To spread literacy, he suggested a state supported volunteer campaign
to teach all children to read. To strengthen families, he called for adding
child allowances to the tax system, and urged extending family leave to give
time for family needs. These measures were low in cost, but potentially large
in impact, both for the number of lives they would touch, and the way little
or not commitment of government funds would generate a much bigger private
response. They touched a responsive chord among Americans, who may want a
smaller state, but also want one that does more to help families.
The fact that the Republicans retained control of the Congress
despite Dole’s defeat is as much a confirmation of the voter’s quest
for a centrist alternative, consistent with their values, as Clinton’s
re-election was. The Republicans won the Congress not by maintaining Newt
Gingrich’s swerve to the right, but by abandoning it. In the closing
months of the congressional session the more vulnerable Republican Congressmen
broke ranks and backed many of Clinton’s initiatives. During the campaign
they sounded more like a Clinton choir than the roaring right-wingers of 1994.
Of course, Clinton’s lead was also maintained and widened
by the technical mastery which he and his campaign displayed, aided by the
Dole’s unimpressive performance. From early on in the year, the potential
arguments which could be marshalled for and against Clinton and his major
opponents were tested, and rebuttals found. They were incorporated into a
comprehensive strategy to which the President adhered with great gusto. Responding
to evidence that voters were tired of relentlessly negative attack ads, the
campaign virtually created a new type, the comparative ad, joining factual
criticism of the opponent with positive information about Clinton’s record
and plans. In addition, Dole’s inability to articulate a reason for his
candidacy, indiscipline and inarticulateness on the stump, and incoherent
ad campaign undoubtedly were gifts to the Clinton camp.
Yet what the President’s detractors have consistently failed to realize is that though tacking is his method and polls are his compass, Clinton sets his own course. It was originally articulated in his first campaign for President, and returned to in the past two years. It is one which seeks to preserve and extend the traditional American values of opportunity and compassion in the rapidly changing context of a world hurtling into the 21st century.
Craig Charney has worked closely
with Bill Clinton’s staff throughout his campaign for election to a second
term as the president of the US. He was senior analyst on the Clinton campaign
polling team at the New York polling firm of Penn & Schoen. He recently
spoke at USIS.Mumbai on what really put Clinton ahead of Bob Dole in the recently
concluded American elections.
< Return to CHARNEY RESEARCH STAFF PUBLICATIONS >