Re-asessing Clinton

Under the byline of "Anonymous', Joe Klein will forever be linked to the Clinton Presidency as the author of the best selling novel 'Primary Colors." A thinly veiled fictional account of a charmingly roguish Southern Presidential candidate, the book brilliantly conveyed the chaotic and self-regarding energy of the Clinton personality and campaign.

Now with 'The Natural; the misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton', (Doubleday, 230pp, $22.95), Klein tries to disentangle the reality from all the other assorted fictions that have accumulated around the most successful Democratic politician since Franklin D. Roosevelt. At least, he was the only one since FDR to have been elected twice to the White House. One of the most acute and insightful political journalists around, and one of the most gifted wordsmiths, Klein tries to balance the remarkable domestic achievements that attended the longest period of sustained growth in American economic history with the squalid soap opera of the Clinton years.

Historians will always have trouble getting this balance right, while fitting in the far mixed record on foreign policy. In his overall judgment, Klein takes us little further than the 'on the one hand, on the other' bromides that filled newspapers and magazines as Clinton left office. But he does bring two new and striking perceptions, or perhaps targets, to explain the contrasting hues in which any Clinton portrait must be sketched.

The first target is Hillary, whom he blames for the White House civil war between the innovative policy centrists of the New Democrats and "the anachronistic liberals, the young Stephanopoulosites and the Hillary cadre." They insisted on pushing the doomed attempt at health care reform, rather than the welfare reform and the bill putting 100,000 cops on the streets that might have fended off the Republican landslide in the 1994 Congressional elections.

Klein knows the Clintons well enough to recognize some of the strange yet potent alchemy that links them in a genuine love match of mutual dependency and competition. She came up with the enduring tag line to his 1992 campaign, that celebration of his birthplace that portrayed him as a politician who "still believes in a place called Hope."

And yet in a telling quotation from White House Communications Director David Gergen, Klein explains how the dark shadow of Hillary's moods and partisanship could spread through the Oval Office: "A chipper President would arrive at the office in the morning. A phone would ring. It was a call from upstairs at the residence. He would listen, utter a few words, but as we started back to work, his mood would darken, his attention would wander and hot words would spew out. Had we seen the outrageous things his enemies were saying about him now? Why hadn't we attacked? Why was he working so hard and getting so little credit? Why was his staff screwing him again? What, I would wonder, had she said to him now?"

Klein's second target is his own profession. He rightly praises Clinton for taking more Americans out of poverty than any other President through his Earned Income Tax Credit. Why have most Americans never heard of it? Because it was "too cumbersome a concept for most journalists to even bother to understand, much less attempt to describe."

"In Washington, news is a parlor game," Klein says, trying to explain why the media was too busy playing Presidential "Gotcha!" to notice that the small print in Clinton's 1997 budget deal resulted in the biggest income transfer from rich to poor in federal history. It amounted to some $70 billions over five years to families with incomes below $30,000 a year. Klein notes, "This was an achievement ignored by Clinton's critics on the left (who wanted bigger social programs), on the right (who wanted less spending) and in the press (who mostly didn't notice).

Why was such a fuss made of the "politics as usual" sacking of the White House Travel Office staff to make way for Arkansas cronies? Because "Travel Office regulars had provided perks and favors, like free transport of purchases made during overseas presidential trips, for the White House press corps for many years and had earned the reciprocal loyalty of the pack."

In a recent interview, Klein asked Clinton what he might have done without the Lewinsky and impeachment distractions. Fix Social Security and Medicare, Clinton replied. He might also have had more time and energy for a last heave on the Middle East peace process. But like so much of the rest of the unfulfilled promise of the Clinton years, judgments on his foreign policy and his domestic drift into empty might-have-beens. In reminding us of the real achievements as well as the tabloid tawdriness that Clinton left behind, Klein emphasizes how far Clinton disappointed himself, as well as the people who twice voted him into office.