pRESIDENT CLINTON’S INTUITION was wrong. He thought House Speaker Newt Gingrich would go for a quick budget deal that averted a government shutdown. Still, when Gingrich proved unwilling to compromise, Clinton and his aides were ready. For once, they had out-planned Gingrich. They put congressional Republicans on defense. By early November, the White House was preparing for a shut-down, developing themes (the GOP budget is “bad for America”) and political tactics, and trying to create a crisis atmosphere in which Gingrich would cave. When Republicans proposed to raise Medicare premiums slightly, Clinton pounced. And when Gingrich said he’d been snubbed on the Air Force One trip from Israel after Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral, the White House reacted in mock disbelief at Gingrich’s gaffe, then handed out photos showing Clinton had spent time with Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole on the plane. Also, during the shutdown, Clinton made sure he couldn’t be criticized for keeping the full White House staff on the payroll. Only 90 of 400-plus staffers stayed. Even Doug Sosnick, the White House political director, was furloughed.
Good as his tactics were, the president made a mistake: He overplayed his hand. It happened November 15, the third day of the shutdown, during Clinton’s interview with CBS News anchor Dan Rather. He vowed to veto a stripped-down Republican bill that would resume government operations on the condition that the president agree to balance the budget in seven years and to use economic projections by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Off*ce as the basis for doing so. Rather than sign this, Clinton said he’d let the shutdown last “90 days, 120 days, 180 days . . . right into the next election. ” Why? Because the seven-year/CBO requirement meant accepting the Republican budget with its deep cuts “in Medicare and Medicaid, in education, in the environment, and a tax increase on working people,” Clinton insisted. The next day, he made things worse by failing to back off. “I will still veto any bill that requires crippling cuts in Medicare, weakens the environment, reduces educational opportunity, or raises taxes on working families,” he declared.
The problem for Clinton is his argument isn’t true. The seven-year/CBO requirement is a goal, not a mandate for particular cuts. It could be satisfied by tossing out all the GOP spending cuts and substituting reductions in Pentagon spending and changes in tax rates, or by accepting some of the Republican cuts and shrinking the size of the GOP’s proposed tax cut. It could be satisfied an infinite number of ways. Clinton all but conceded this point — unintentionally, I suspect-when he was asked on Nov. 16 why 48 House Democrats had voted for the GOP measure. He said they weren’t endorsing the Republican budget. They have their own budget, with smaller spending cuts and no tax cut. They wanted “to own up to the fact,” Clinton said, that their budget met the seven-year/CBO standard. Well, if theirs did, so could others’. Republicans weren’t really imposing their budget priorities by insisting on the seven-year/CBO requirement.
The upshot: Clinton had adopted an indefensible position and declared himself inflexible. This was a shift from a few days earlier when he harped on the GOP scheme to boost Part B Medicare premiums from $ 46 to $ 52 a month. Clinton’s rhetoric on this was cynical (he favored a premium increase, too) and demagogic (“sharp hikes in Medicare premiums”). But at least there was a factual basis for his claim. This wasn’t the case once Republicans had jettisoned the Medicare and other amendments and asked the president only for a commitment to a balanced budget in seven years, CBO-style. Clinton was unbending across the board. When he met with Republican leaders on November 13, he brushed aside Gingrich’s suggestion that CBO officials confer with White House experts over possible adjustments in economic projections. And he later rejected the idea of summoning Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to mediate the dispute over projections.
Clinton’s position may be unsustainable, but it will serve his purposes for a while. There was method in his madness. If an early deal with Gingrich on favorable terms for Clinton wasn’t possible, the president was better off politically by prolonging the fight, at least past December 15. That’s the filing date for presidential candidates in New Hampshire. Clinton wants desperately to avoid a primary challenger. An early settlement on Gingrich’s terms might provoke one. But dragging out a fight with Gingrich keeps the president on good terms with the liberal base of his party, indeed with practically all Democrats. As the shutdown lingered, Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos gushed that the president “received the same standing ovation from the Democratic Leadership Council that he received from the Democratic caucus in the House.” The one thing DLC and congressional Democrats agree on is hatred of Gingrich.
Clinton knows the acclaim, from liberals particularly, can’t last. He’s not looking for the struggle to end the same way as the movie The American President, which many at the White House saw. Stephanopoulos, among others, helped director Rob Reiner, a Clinton fan, on the film. In it, a slick, non- ideological president is transformed into a liberal crusader. The fictional president makes no deal with the devil. In real life, though, Clinton wants a budget deal with Gingrich. He wants to be able to claim, while running for re- election next year, that he overcame gridlock and cut taxes, cut spending, put the country on a credible path to a balanced budget, saved Medicare, and reformed welfare. Liberal Democrats won’t like the accord Clinton ultimately reaches with Gingrich. But Clinton will have thrilled them temporarily by touting social spending programs and thwarting Gingrich.
Nothing delighted them more than Gingrich’s discomfort after making the childish complaint he’d been treated rudely on Air Force One. Clinton didn’t set Gingrich up for embarrassment, but it worked as if he had. On the flight from Israel, Gingrich expected to have budget discussions with the president. Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary, had said talks would occur on the flight home. Clinton was ready to talk. But he’d been put off by a long chat with Gingrich and Dole three days before the trip. “They’re just dug in,” the president told an aide after that session. On the plane, he sent Leon Panetta, the White House chief of staff, to check whether Gingrich and Dole had softened their position. Panetta reported back that they hadn’t. So Clinton slept, Gingrich fumed, and the government shut down. *
by Fred Barnes
