On Balkanization Jack Balkin offers an insightful analysis of why Bill Clinton was reviled by so many Republicans:
Clinton understood that the Democrats could get back in the White House if they appealed to parts of the coalition of voters that had elected Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. And so he set out consciously to do that. He fractured the existing winning coalition by producing a combination of economic policies designed to appeal to middle class voters while accepting certain elements of the values agenda that had played so well for the Republicans. He focused on issues like crime and welfare, emphasized his populist roots and religious sensibilities, while at the same time maintaining strong ties to secularism, feminism, and civil rights. In this way Clinton threatened to create a new winning coalition by borrowing the rhetoric of his political opponents and becoming a more “Republican version” of a Democrat.
My purpose here is not to enter into a discussion of why some conservatives hated Clinton (and I will refuse to do so). Instead, I note Jack’s observation because it is ALSO the reason why Clinton was reviled by the more left-wing constituents of the Democratic base. A Democrat with less personal charisma would have been abandoned by his alienated base, but they were forced to like it or lump it.
Indeed, what made Bill Clinton a potentially transformative president like FDR and Reagan (and so threatening to Republicans) was precisely his personal appeal to the electorate. Like FDR and Reagan, he was simply not beholden to the disparate elements of his own party coalition for his electoral success. They were beholden to him for delivering them to the White House, and potentially beyond (and many in his party resented him for it at the time).
All this is why I believe Clinton’s personal weaknesses were so tragic, not for him but for his party, and why he was not the transformative figure he might well have been. When Clinton’s character weaknesses crossed the line to leave him both politically and legally vulnerable to his political opponents, he then was forced to abandon this centrist strategy of triangulation and to rely on his base to save his presidency, thereby ending, at least for now, any transformative move by Democrats towards the center.
Even if you deny that he moved left, it is undeniable that the party, after Clinton, abandoned the strategy that Jack so accurately describes in the above quote, thereby preventing it from exploiting the strategy that Clinton proved so electorally effective. Had Clinton not been so slippery about the truth, or had kept his sexual activities outside the vicinity of workplace harassment (about which he could be deposed) or sexual subordination, he would surely have remade the Democratic Party in his image.
As it is, the Democrats have now reverted to their pre-Clinton pattern, with an extra-strength dose of 60’s antiwar revivalism for good measure. Note that Hillary is not participating in this tack to the left in foreign policy, and the Democratic base is giving her the same pass they gave Bill, albeit with more enthusiasm perhaps because she is not dissing them on domestic policy and they trust her more. Query, was Hillary really to the left of Bill as she appeared to her supporters and detractors alike, or was she merely the “good cop” to Bill’s “bad cop” to Democrats and vice versa to Republicans. (What a team they made!)
Now there is one huge counter argument to Jack’s story and mine: Bill and Hillary’s early commitment to a radical reform of the health care industry. Now I know it was supposedly short of a “single payer system” and therefore supposed to be “moderate.” But it was a major policy shift to the left and, regardless of how reasonable it may have appeared tactically ex ante, it was largely responsible ex post for the Republican take over of the House of Representatives in ’94, long before the Clinton personal scandals gained any real traction. I am not sure what to make of this twist. Perhaps Clinton’s triangulation strategy only became honed and effective with someone like Newt Gingrich as his foil. In other words, perhaps Bill Clinton’s strength was in tactics rather than strategy. I am open to suggestion about this.
Regardless of how the first two years of his administration is interpreted, however, the tragedy remains the same. The difference between Bill Clinton and both Al Gore and John Kerry is that Clinton’s political skills transcended his party’s coalition, whereas (to date) both Gore and Kerry are entirely dependent upon that coalition and therefore not free to maneuver in a manner that would capture the broad middle of the electorate.
If I am right about all this, then two further mysteries remain. Why did the Democrats, including the left, close ranks around Clinton when his ouster would have meant the elevation of Al Gore to the presidency, clearly giving Democrats a substantial edge going into the 2000 election? Clinton’s claim that impeachment was a partisan coup has always neglected how it was against the interests of Republicans to pursue his removal from office successfully–and perhaps this is why they failed in the end to convict him, though this outcome was hardly so likely that Republicans could count on it and it was Republican “moderates” who saved him. Perhaps Democrats are so viscerally averse to permitting any Republican victories that they would cut off their political noses to spite their foes? I really do not know.
The second mystery is why Democrats, especially those on the left, remain so loyal and affectionate towards the man who either betrayed their principles (when triangulating) or betrayed their chance to form a winning coalition (by his solely personal and sexist self-aggrandizement). Why is he not in disgrace with them, just as Gingrich lacks standing with the most partisan Republicans for having “blown it” big time. Is Clinton simply forever “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” by winning back the White House while driving conservatives nuts? Or is there some underlying schism in the Democrat psyche? Again, I really do not know.
Perhaps Jack does.
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