REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Who Is Bill Clinton?
Originially published in The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 1992.

Sunday, August 13, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT

We doubt that what the United States needs now is an easy re-election for George Bush. The President was talking yesterday about how it'd be great if he were running unopposed for the Republican nomination, free of the Buchanan insurgency. Then he could concentrate on the mercurial Governor from Arkansas. Instead, what this President and the country very much need right now is some serious political competition among serious candidates with serious ideas. For now, we seem headed in the other direction. No wonder voters are surly.

Operation Desert Storm was a grand achievement for the U.S., but it did have the effect of driving relatively strong and familiar Democrats such as Al Gore and Bill Bradley from the field. With Bill Clinton now regnant, the system must once again come to grips at the presidential level with more Democratic mystery and weirdness.

Every four years the Democrats send us another Governor we have to get to know. Getting to know Jimmy Carter took more than a few months. The first time we ran a two-name editorial to get at the mind of a confused policy maker was February 8, 1977, "Jimmy McGovern." It commented on the Carter appointment of Paul Warnke, chief apologist for George McGovern's $30 billion cut in the Pentagon budget, as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. This was somewhat surprising from an Annapolis graduate who'd run an anti-Washington campaign, and we noted: "But if he intended to follow the foreign and defense policies so roundly rejected by the voters four years ago, it would have been nice if he had told us so during the campaign." By 1980, everyone in the country knew what was meant by the phrase, "There you go again."

In 1984 we had to go through the experience of getting to know Geraldine Ferraro and John Zaccaro, who copped a plea. But Fritz Mondale was a known quantity and made no attempt to hide it, pledging to raise taxes and saying that Ronald Reagan would too but wasn't honest about it. Senator Mondale carried Minnesota and the District of Columbia, and in 1986 the top marginal tax rate was cut to 28%.

So in 1988 it was back to Michael Dukakis, and Kitty. By this time the voters were savvier about getting to know people. They got a quick fix on Governor Dukakis, in no small part thanks to Roger Ailes's revolving-door ad (which contrary to popular mythology never included Willie Horton; that ad was put on the air by an independent group spending its own money). The ride in the tank also helped. Such are the straws voters must stay alert for while watching modern Democrats campaign for the presidency.

So it now appears we will get to know, or try to get to know, Bill Clinton and Hillary. The Gennifer Flowers tank has already rumbled by. But where's the rest of them? We seem to have a distant memory of Governor Clinton riding onto the scene with talk of a "New Covenant," which had something to do with emphasizing economic growth, honest work, redesigning welfare and other lurches toward the center; even Orange County Republicans seemed taken with it. Then two weeks ago it turns out that the Governor's campaign is actually about "populism," with something called "the rich" being chased down to "pay their fair share." And when do we get an honest fix on how Hillary's politics fit into all this?

The real question is why the party that dominates Congress has to keep putting up unknowns to contest the world's most powerful political office. Why is Washington such dead ground for growing Democratic presidential timber? About this there is no mystery. It is because the political positions of the Democratic House Caucus are rigorously enforced on Congresspeople. Encumbered with this awful political baggage, none of them can win a presidential election.

Senator Bob Kerrey, who could make legitimate claims to being a person of some substance, dutifully carried the Beltway Democratic baggage of protectionism and national health into his campaign. He went down in flames. Tom Harkin, an even more hard-core carrier of the Caucus's politics, was the 4% man.

So once again it comes to this: Is there any real reason to trust an unknown Governor when he says he's different? We'll find out eventually, and with any luck at all, revelation will come before November.

Next article: Who Is Webster Hubbell? March 2, 1993