In the House crime-bill vote, Clinton was forsaken by Democrats of all stripes. They either couldn’t stomach an assault-weapons ban or objected to the bill’s death-penalty provisions. Even if Clinton reverses this left-right sucker punch on crime, he’s in trouble in his own party on health care. Democratic Sens. Sam Nunn, David Boren and Richard Shelby are apparently about to embrace a watered-down, nonuniversal plan. That may prompt a veto, meaning that Democrats will have essentially forced their president to strangle his own baby.
This faithlessness cannot be explained away by the decline of political parties in the TV age. After all, on Capitol Hill the Republicans are now a tightly disciplined and unified party. Last year every single Republican in both the House and the Senate voted against the Clinton budget. Earlier this summer Republicans moved largely in lock step against even a modest cigarette tax to pay for health care. And last week only 11 House Republicans (out of 178) backed the crime bill on the procedural vote. An astonishing 54 GOP members voted in favor of a nearly identical bill on the House floor in April, then – despite its popularity with constituents – reversed themselves on orders from their leadership. By contrast, 40 Democrats reversed themselves over the strenuous objections of their leadership.
On one level, the embarrassing loss was simply a miscalculation. Democrats scheduled the vote, expecting it to be another of what are playfully called “Clinton landslides” – votes on which the White House is behind going in but prevails by narrow margins at the last minute. It wasn’t.
But the defeat also had symbolic importance. Bill Clinton is the embodiment of his party’s confused state. He’s a plurality president (43 percent) trying to govern as if he had won with a large majority. Elected as a “New Democrat,” Clinton’s governing strategy is old, familiar and in conflict with the tone of his campaign. It depends on passing conventionally structured bills on party lines lubricated with pork. Even comfortable Democratic majorities in both houses cannot sustain this approach. Weakened in the polls, Clinton inspires no fear. Democratic candidates have been advised by the president’s own pollster, Stan Greenberg, to run away from him in their districts. And the more ambitious his agenda, the easier it is for Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich to object. When the subject is more government, “no” is a simpler, more effective message than the ambivalent “yes, but . . .”
To make matters more confusing, the electorate is deeply at odds with itself. The public loathes gridlock and voted for Clinton in order to get action. But a combination of grim personal experience and effective conservative sloganeering has made voters suspicious of government solutions. Washington will somehow mess up my health care! No crime bill will make my street safer! That’s a stiff wind – stiff enough to upend a president’s agenda.
That still doesn’t explain the Discipline Gap. When the GOP whip cracks, Republicans jump. When the Democratic whip cracks, Democrats laugh. Why? A common but insufficient answer is that Republicans stick together better than Democrats because they are in the minority. Under this theory, if the Democrats were to lose control of Congress, they’d stay united, too. Perhaps. But in the early ’80s, when the GOP controlled the White House and the Senate, it was the Democrats – especially the “boll weevil” Southern Democrats – who were disloyal. When a few Republicans were tempted to stray, hard-assed aides slapped them back into line. “We stood him in front of an open grave,” said one Reagan White House staffer, cryptically explaining how they converted the then Sen. Roger Jepsen, an Iowa Republican, on a close vote.
Contrast this to last week, when, for instance, Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Democrat, bragged to friends about how easily he sidestepped House Speaker Thomas Foley, who called to lobby him on the crime bill. Apparently, Tauzin just said no, and Foley just said OK. “If he had done that with [ex-speaker] Jim Wright, Tauzin would have been the former committee chairman,” says one Clinton official.
Although Democrats used to have an easier time turning the screws, the party has never been orderly. In 1938, several Southern Democrats deserted Franklin Roosevelt, and he actually campaigned (unsuccessfully) against them. For years, Democratic White Houses have been run on creative chaos, while Republicans followed a more rigid chain of command. Part of this is occupational. Democratic politicians tend to be lawyers, who are trained to believe that the quirky truth emerges from clashing arguments. Republicans more often come from business, where they are trained to subordinate their personal views to the interest of the deal. And in the galleries, liberal pundits are by instinct critical of their own; most conservative pundits toe at least the broad elements of the party line.
Transcending this history isn’t easy. Organized labor, hurt by the NAFTA vote, is too weak to sharpen its old stick. And it’s now common knowledge that Clinton himself is temperamentally hopeless at stiffing those who’ve crossed him (friends are a differ-ent matter). His strength lies in carrots – carefully appeasing members of Congress with ego strokes and little favors. He’s better at this than most recent presidents, which accounts for his legislative victories on the budget and other issues. But the carrots don’t go down so easily anymore. Critics are quick to label them pork. And several big issues – like health care – can’t readily be loaded up with geographically placed goodies for individual members.
Instead, health-care favors are doled out to interest groups, and here Clinton has proven inept. He was certain he had bought off big interest groups with expensive favors only to find that they didn’t stay bought. For instance, despite receiv-ing a huge handout in the form of government-subsidized early-retirement benefits, big business has hardly lifted a finger for the president’s health-care plan. As for the stick, there’s no way to “punish” the $100 million media and direct-mail campaign against the plan. Even Lyndon B. Johnson couldn’t have brought Harry and Louise around.
Fighting them requires an effective communications strategy, which Clinton has lacked since the campaign. From the beginning, it has been no contest between simple Reaganite homilies and wordy Democratic policy-speak. “Message discipline,” as the political consultants call it, has been in short supply. The clunky “universal coverage” became a household phrase, but “cost containment” – once a centerpiece of the plan – didn’t. Or consider even the simple matter of what the whole health concept should be called. If the Democrats had any message discipline, they would have stuck with the phrase “health security” and repeated it ad nauseam. Anyone who strayed from that mantra and called it something else would have been rebuked.
The dilemma for the Democrats is that even if they tried to rebuke their allies for straying, it would probably backfire. The GOP can threaten with more impunity. Recently, for instance, the Republican National Committee sent a letter to House Republicans threatening to cut off campaign funds to anyone who voted for the crime bill. Had the Democratic National Committee tried the same thing, the whole party would have been in open revolt. Last week the RNC withdrew the letter and said it was a mistake. No one noticed. Had the DNC done the same, it would have been seen as a major gaffe.
David Wilhelm, who quit under pressure last week as DNC chairman after sniping from some fellow Democrats in the White House, argues that the Discipline Gap is a function of the parties’ differing tasks. “It’s much easier to organize when you’re tearing down,” he says. “When you build something, there’s always disagreement about how to do it.”
Of course, just because they are more naturally disciplined doesn’t mean that Republicans will be able to stymie the Democrats. Their discipline can flag, as it did during the 1992 campaign, and clashes with the Christian Right could capsize them. Besides, Clinton and the Democrats still have plenty of life left. Recall that NAFTA wasn’t perceived as a victory until it was nearly lost. The same may be true of crime and health care. Another defeat on the crime bill might well doom health care, but a highly publicized victory on crime could reverse the momentum. The Republicans are smiling now, but gridlock – even beautifully disciplined gridlock – is a strategy that has failed for them before.
