Clinton's Ten Commandments
Commentary: These are the words politicians live by. Brush up and you, too, can make sense out of this year's campaign promises.
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On June 18, the day after Senate Republicans killed this year's big tobacco regulation bill, Newt Gingrich announced, "The liberal effort to write a big-government, big-tax bill has failed." In its place, he promised a narrower bill to deter teen smoking. The next day, surrounded by dozens of schoolchildren recruited from an unrelated field trip, Gingrich boasted that Republicans "refuse to give the tobacco companies immunity, and we refuse to give the politicians money, and we think you ought to focus on saving young people." Turning to a little girl beside him, Gingrich asked, "Right?" In unison, the children shouted their response: "Yeah!"
It was enough to make a Democrat sick. Indeed, President Clinton looked ill as he explained to the press how Republicans had killed the bill: They poisoned public opinion against it with the help of a big-lie ad campaign. Then they bogged it down with gifts to special interests. Finally, they buried it while using Gingrich's alternative proposal as "cover."
But Clinton has only himself to blame. For six years, he has written the book on how to stay in power by trivializing politics. The GOP has learned its lessons—often, as Gingrich puts it, lessons learned the hard way—and is now using Clinton's own tactics against him. To decipher what this year's elections are really about, don't waste your time reading progressive or conservative manifestos. Instead, study the script both parties are following: the cynical political commandments of the Clinton era.
1. Thou art the Lord their incumbent, who has brought them out of recession. After the 1994 Republican sweep, Clinton reduced his agenda to tiny, symbolic gestures such as school uniforms, vilified the GOP as the party of radical change, repositioned himself as the defender of the status quo, and won re-election. Now he does nothing but claim undue credit for all the jobs created since 1993. Gingrich, similarly chastened by the Democratic gains of 1996, has sworn off bold initiatives and shrunk the congressional calendar to a minimum. Clinton portrays it as a do-nothing Congress—his highest compliment. Gingrich has even plagiarized Clinton's boasts about economic recovery, except that Gingrich pretends it started in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress.
2. Thou shalt have no other gods before "me." In 1996, Clinton savaged Bob Dole for trying to limit the growth of Medicare. Since then, Republicans have fully embraced the me-first attitude of the average voter. They larded this year's appropriations bills for transportation, energy, water projects, and military construction with billions of dollars in pork to benefit their districts, often exceeding the amounts Clinton had asked for. And when Clinton asked for financial sacrifice—higher prices on cigarettes to deter youth smoking—the GOP helped rally angry smokers and killed the bill.
3. Thou shalt covet thy neighbor's issue. Clinton perfected the art of stealing issues by agreeing with the other party in principle and offering a milder counterproposal, such as this year's compromise measure to help taxpayers fight the IRS. Gingrich has learned the technique well. After covering up the GOP's murder of the tobacco bill with a fig-leaf anti-smoking initiative, he co-opted HMO reform by orchestrating an alternative plan that satisfied moderate Republicans but omitted some consumer guarantees sought by Democrats. His hijacking of the Shays-Meehan campaign reform bill was particularly brilliant. After suppressing the bill for months, he reversed course and invited hundreds of amendments, hoping to smother it with alternatives.
4. Thou shalt subsidize thy voter's goods, house, spouse, maidservant, and anything else that is thy voter's. Clinton maximizes his political profit by doling out federal money to target constituencies in carefully packaged units, such as tax breaks for college and childcare. Though right-wing true believers continue to demand radical tax reform, Gingrich is pushing instead for a targeted tax cut each year. The GOP now offers gifts for births (child tax credits), weddings (tax relief for married couples), and funerals (estate tax relief). What about bar mitzvahs?
5. Thou shalt not steal, except through the tax code. What makes Clinton's targeted subsidies doubly ingenious is that they turn the tax-and-spend rap on its head, because, as the college tuition subsidy illustrates, they're "tax cuts" rather than "programs." Republicans have joined in the looting. While posturing to limit federal funding of schools and health insurance, they're happy to shell out the same money in tax-deferred "education savings accounts" and "medical savings accounts." The difference is that if you're poor, the tax breaks don't help you. This year, they've been trying to inflate revenue projections to make room for election-year tax cuts. In other words, deficit spending.
6. Thou shalt take the name of "values" in vain. Clinton inoculates himself against the "family values" canard by framing every issue in moral terms. In July, for example, he vowed to put warning labels on unpasteurized fruit juice "to keep our families safe and strong." Republicans have learned the same trick. Killing the National Endowment for the Arts isn't about saving a few bucks; it's about honoring decent communities. Vouchers for private religious schools aren't a sop to suburbanites; they're a way to "revive values and families," according to football star cum conservative spokesman Reggie White. Cutting the estate tax isn't a favor to the rich; it's a mercy to families who, as Rep. Bill Archer (R-Texas) poignantly puts it, shouldn't "have to visit the undertaker and the IRS in the same day."
7. Thou shalt make false idols of the middle class. Clinton used to score points by accusing Republicans of serving the rich. Now they bait their hooks with morsels for working folks. They've offered to limit the marriage tax break, for the time being, to couples earning less than $50,000 a year. And to build momentum for nationwide school privatization, which would favor the wealthy, they're trying to start with a voucher scheme for poor kids in Washington, D.C.
8. Thou shalt bear false witness against thy donor. Clinton perfected triangulation, the art of looking moderate by repudiating unpopular figures associated with one's own party. In 1992, his target was rapper Sister Souljah; in 1995, it was congressional liberals. This year, Republicans, who took $3.3 million in contributions from tobacco interests in 1997, boasted of stripping the tobacco bill of liability limits for these companies. In so doing, they distanced themselves from Big Tobacco and, in the same stroke, removed the companies' incentive to cooperate with the legislation, thereby dooming it.
9. Honor thy fathers and thy mothers. Parents love laws and gizmos that enhance their authority over their kids. So in 1996, Clinton wooed them with V-chips, school uniforms, curfews, Internet filters, and restrictions on teen smoking. Now Republicans are raising the ante. They don't hate gay men; they just want to prevent them from leading Boy Scout troops, in order to protect your son. They don't really want to ban all abortions; they just want to prohibit a "stranger" from shuttling your daughter to another state to get one. They don't want to abandon public education; they just want to give you "school choice."
10. Six days shalt thou spin, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. Well before the 1996 election, Clinton ensured his victory by saturating the country with television ads accusing Republicans of cutting Medicare and education. Conservatives learned their lesson: Define the debate early. This year, weeks before the Senate took up the tobacco bill, cigarette companies launched a nationwide ad campaign calling it "tax and spend." As the public inhaled the ads, the bill developed political cancer. Guess who masterminded the campaign? Carter Eskew, a one-time Clinton consultant whose former partner, Bob Squier, made those famous ads for Clinton in 1995. What goes around comes around.
Image: Jonathon Rosen
