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The hits and misses of a protean president

WHEN BILL CLINTON TOOK THE oath of office in 1993, Serbian forces were running rampant in Bosnia. Villages were burning; men were being lined up behind their houses and shot. Civil war was spreading, but the new president was shackled by Colin Powell's doctrine that the United States should never enter battle without decisive force and clear objectives. So Clinton put his thumbs in his pockets and continued the dithering of the Bush administration for a year and a half until shame essentially forced the Dayton peace settlement.

Six years later, when Serbian forces cut loose in Kosovo, Clinton threw Powell's doctrine out the window. Obviously unclear about his goals, the president alienated Republican and Democratic traditionalists alike. The United States certainly didn't use decisive force, nor did we pursue a clear objective: Were we trying to force Milosevic from power, or just stop human-rights abuses? And what was going on with our relationship with the U.N.? Clinton limited his options by pledging at the outset not to commit ground troops. So he waged the battle exclusively from bombers 15,000 feet up, fully aware that no country had ever won a war that way. No matter. Genuflecting to public opinion while juggling new strategies worked. Milosevic threw down his cards, and the end game was a rout. The Serbian dictator has been forced out of power and, despite minor snafus, victory came without the sacrifice of a single American life.

Neither Bosnia nor Kosovo was the defining moment of the Man From Hope's eight years in the White House. But the essence of Clintonism can be found in the difference between his responses to the two crises. For eight years, whenever Clinton let himself become constrained by grand themes and conventional wisdom, he failed. When he stayed in motion and used his instincts like a political fox, he triumphed.

He abandoned large legislative ideas when his healthcare plan imploded and Newt Gingrich took over Congress. He ditched the public investment plans he had campaigned on soon after being sworn in. He tried half-heartedly and unsuccessfully to come up with a big foreign policy idea, and instead produced a mishmash that infuriates experts but works fine for everybody else. He sometimes argues that his presidency does have a central theme: stewarding the country from the industrial age to the information age. Then this brilliant communicator essentially discredits the very notion with each garbled explanation.

Still, by simultaneously pushing and pulling in hundreds of directions, and sticking by a series of evolving moderate themes, Bill Clinton has justifiably won enduring popularity. The country is far more prosperous, safer, and internationally strong than when he took office. He has failed frequently, sometimes succeeded through sheer dumb luck, and changed the culture of politics for the worse. But ultimately this protean and often-maddening president is a big factor in why we're so much better off today than we were eight years ago.

Running the Economy

Grade: A

Presidents don't run the economy. They don't drive delivery trucks or lay electronic switches in silicon. But they do have their hands on the various levers that push the economy forward. They send signals to business; they help set key economic indices; they determine much of our trade policies.

Running for office, Clinton vowed to concentrate "like a laser beam" on the economy. This was still the era when Japan seemed like the biggest bull in the barnyard, and Clinton's economic plan was modeled on their industrial policy: ramping up our investment in public infrastructure and taxing companies to set up worker training programs. As Clinton said during the final presidential debate, "My passion is to pass a jobs program."

Once in office, Clinton quickly tacked. He learned both that the economy was gaining steam and that the budget deficit was worse than anticipated--consequently, his top economic advisers argued that deficit reduction, which should reduce long-term interest rates, was the surest way out of the slump. Clinton listened carefully and decided that being right trumped being consistent with campaign rhetoric. So he rolled up his sleeves and started doing what he does best: molding a policy, brawling in the back rooms, and charming potential supporters.

He navigated through a protracted battle within the administration and Congress, and wrote a budget that mixed deficit reduction with progressive policy and second-best compromises. He sharply reduced the deficit by lowering spending and raising the federal gasoline tax along with taxes on the affluent. He hiked up funding for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a reverse income tax that gives money back to poor people who work. He abandoned an energy tax, dear to Vice President Gore, which seemed like a last-minute deal killer.

Clinton's budget bill received absolutely no Republican support. It passed the House by two votes and squeaked through the Senate when an anguished Senator Bob Kerrey finally voted for the bill, relenting to hours of presidential arm-twisting, and Gore swooped in to cast the tie-breaking vote. That budget, the fruit of endless hours of presidential labor, probably remains Clinton's most important accomplishment. It set the economy on the right track and laid the groundwork for the coming prosperity.

Boom!

Immediately after the bill passed, long-term interest rates dropped. Clinton had not only taken a strong swing at the exploding deficit of the past 12 years, he had convinced the financial markets that he was going to work in concert with Greenspan. Traditionally, presidents and Fed chairmen have worked at cross-purposes--one foot down on the accelerator, one pumping the brakes. Clinton broke that destructive cycle with his political and personal skills. He invited Greenspan to sit between Tipper Gore and Hillary during his first State of the Union address. More important, he stuck firmly to Greenspan's specific deficit goals, passed on covertly by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen. The role of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punch bowl before the party gets out of hand, but Clinton made it clear that he was serving everyone ice water. So the chairman kept short-term interest rates virtually constant and the markets soared.

Clinton also pushed free-trade agreements through Congress by mustering a bipartisan coalition. With the help of a team of seasoned veterans, he steered the United States through the firestorms that menaced the world economy in 1997 and 1998. Clinton even courageously defied public opinion in offering Mexico a $40 billion loan when the peso crashed in 1995.

He also, through an act of cunning, stymied the Gingrich Congress' efforts to roll back taxes and revert to the trickle-down policies of the Reagan and Bush years. In his 1998 State of the Union address, he lyrically proclaimed that we should use surpluses to "save Social Security first." As Michael Waldman, then the president's chief speechwriter, writes in his recent book, POTUS Speaks: "The Democrats leapt to their feet, cheering. Gingrich paused for a discernible instant--then he, too, stood, applauding ... In that instant, a trillion dollars silently shifted on the budget ledger from the column marked `tax cut' to the column marked `Social Security.'"

Clinton's four-word phrase was misleading: No president or Congress can really lock revenues away from future politicians. In practical terms, Clinton had guaranteed that surplus money coming from the Social Security tax would pay down the debt. Clinton knew that the country needed increased savings, not tax cuts that could well push the needle of the fast-moving economy into the red. Once again, Clinton had outfoxed his opponents--almost certainly for the country's good.

Domestic Policy

Grade: B+

When Clinton ran for office, Democrats had lost five of the previous six presidential elections. Their policies were seen nationally as mushy or excessive: They favored welfare cheats and snail darters and opposed accountable schools and crime enforcement.

Clinton entered the country's spotlight as a New Democrat and during the '92 campaign he gained traction by disavowing old Democratic gospel, espousing positions ranging from the death penalty to requiring welfare recipients to work. Once elected, he moved left and stumbled trying to push a more traditional Democratic agenda. He was only saved, it seems, by the Republican takeover of Congress.