Mike Morrison, who is 16 and has cerebral palsy, drifted with his friends into the Winnisquam High School library that day-Oct. 15, 1991-to listen to yet another guy no one had ever heard of talk about why he wanted to be president of the United States. It was part of the price you paid for being a kid in New Hampshire. The day before, it had been a senator from Nebraska. And now, the governor of … where? Arkansas. Expectations were not enormous. But Bill Clinton proved something of a surprise: he told them they were undereducated-way behind the kids in Korea and Japan-and they’d have to catch up if they wanted to land good jobs. “He seemed to respect us,” Mike Morrison remembered. “He listened to what we were saying and answered our questions directly.”
Eventually, Mike became a fixture at rallies and in the Clinton campaign office. When the candidate visited again last October, Mike vowed to watch the polls for him on Election Day. But Nov. 3 dawned rainy; Mike’s mother was at work and couldn’t drive him. “You remember that kid in the wheelchair who always showed up in New Hampshire?” Bill Clinton would say months later. “He took his wheelchair out on the highway in the rain on Election Day. He rode two miles to hold a sign for me. Can you believe that?”
And so, Mike Morrison will have lunch with the president this week, along with 49 other people Bill Clinton met along the way last year. It is likely to be one of the more emotional moments of the Inaugural ceremonies, even if The New York Times ridiculed it on the front page several weeks ago, wondering if the “Faces of Hope” luncheon would be a “political stunt reminiscent of President Bush’s ‘points of light’.” In fact, for Bill Clinton, Mike Morrison’s personal journey from skepticism (“just a photo op”) to devotion is a metaphor for what happened in America last year. He believes his election wasn’t just a victory, but the start of a new era-nothing less than the end of a dark, cynical time that began after the Kennedy assassination and reached full flower in the Reagan-Bush years. It is an ambitious, expansive, romantic vision: with the end of cynicism comes a national rebirth, the revival of hope.
The Clinton campaign was guided throughout by a quiet messianism. It was more than just a holy war against the pinched, divisive brand of conservatism that had overtaken the Republicans in recent years; there was also a confluence of longstanding aspirations and frustrations-Democrats, baby boomers, “new ideas” types all were hoping that their moment had finally come, that it was time to reclaim the idealism of the Kennedy years. “This is a big election,” Clinton would say, as candidates often do-but he was right. The electorate did seem different last year, more caught up in the process, yearning to believe again, ready for something fresh and real.
A case can be made that they didn’t find it in Bill Clinton. He received only 43 percent of the vote, less than Michael Dukakis did in 1988. Ross Perot’s 19 percent was, arguably, the heart of the real constituency for change-the people who were disgusted with politics as usual in both parties, They were people who knew that George Bush was out of touch but saw Clinton as just a bit too cute to be trusted. The press-more anti-Bush than pro-Clinton-tended to see it that way, too: it was a big election, but only because of the extraordinary centrist rebellion, the fifth of all voters who rejected the two established parties.
These two contrasting views of the 1992 campaign-the romantic and the rejectionist-will frame the politics of the next four years. Last week the great battle began: as he prepared for a gagging eruption of self-mythologizing Inaugural hoopla, Bill Clinton hoped to convince the country that the end of cynicism was at hand, that a great national adventure was about to resume. But while the next president gazed mistily toward the blue horizon, Ross Perot rematerialized and began a grass-roots organizing campaign, and the press, as always, had its own agenda, dragging Clinton back to the seamier precincts-promises made and fudged-of the past campaign, Most important, the global mess of tribes and despots-a place neither romantics nor rejectionists paid much heed to in 1992-reasserted its central importance in the affairs of the president. Bill Clinton suddenly found himself tangled up in Haiti and Iraq. It was a rough week for romance.
Indeed, this has not been a happy or very successful transition. Much of the trouble flows from the bizarre nature of the appointment process. Names would be floated in the press by campaign sources, then argued over by contending interest groups, then switched at the last moment to appease those seeking “diversity” or ideological congeniality. Diversity seemed enforced rather than encouraged-and the appointees, a middling lot. Last week no fewer than three of them-Attorney General Zoe Baird (who hired illegal aliens as housekeepers), Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and trade negotiator Mickey Kantor (both of whom had been foreign lobbyists)-were struggling with embarrassing, but probably not fatal, ethics problems.
At the same time, there’s been a gathering sponginess in the policy area. Part of it is the natural retrenchment that takes place after a campaign: Clinton was ready to walk away from his middle-class tax cut when he revised his economic plan last summer, but didn’t want to hand George Bush an issue. His pledges to cut the White House staff and the budget deficit may still be honored in spirit, if not in precise detail. More problematic is his attempt to finesse the gay-rights issue-if he doesn’t issue an executive order allowing homosexuals into the military, it will be a promise broken.
Most worrisome of all was Clinton’s shaky foreign-policy performance. During the campaign he had blasted George Bush for turning back Haitian boat people at sea. Last week he “temporarily” adopted Bush’s position in order to deter an expected Haitian armada. It probably was the right thing to do, but another promise broken-and Clinton was deliberately misleading when he said that he’d always maintained “a clear … distinction between political and economic refugees.” In fact, he had deliberately smudged the distinction, which was why so many Haitians were building boats. In the same press conference, Clinton appeared prickly and defensive when it was pointed out-correctly-that he had implied a possible normalization of relations with Iraq when he told the Times “all [Saddam] has to do is change his behavior” if he wants a “different” relationship with the United States.
These early mistakes are serious, but not grievous. The press will stop picking nits once the next president is in office and actually starts doing things. But the transition has raised the deeper question of whether Clinton is creating an administration able to fulfill the broad, romantic vision he has set for himself. His promise was to reinvigorate government. The central organizing principle was to be “fundamental change.” But he has stocked his pond-with a few notable exceptions-with careerists rather than visionaries: it is an administration that looks like America only if you think America looks like Warren Christopher. Clinton’s argument is that these calm, careful sorts are facilitators who’ll “get things done,” that the “ideas people” (Clinton’s term) salted through the White House and agencies in subsidiary positions will prod the facilitators to do the right thing. Who knows.
So far, Clinton has had little to say to the “rejectionists,” most of whom are more interested in restoring a sense of discipline to the government (and the society) than in “diversity” or rosy rhapsodies about the virtues of service. If the NEWSWEEK Poll is right, most of the skeptics have decided, for the moment, to give their new leader the benefit of the doubt. But he shouldn’t be deceived. Romance alone won’t melt their hardened hearts; but romance tempered by rigor just might.
Is the Clinton administration likely to be more responsive than the Reagan-Bush administrations to the needs of people like you? 56% Yes 36% No
Which is more important for the new Clinton administration:
40% Start to reduce the deficit, even if it might set back economic recovery in the short term 50% Stimulate economic recovery, even if it might set back reducing the deficit in the short term
Will the national economy have improved by the end of Clinton’s four-year term? 65% Yes 31% No
How likely is it that Clinton will…(percent saying somewhat to very likely)
26% Cut the federal budget deficit by half over four years 29% Cut taxes soon for the middle class
Are the people Clinton appointed to his cabinet too tied to special-interest groups? 35% Yes 43 No
How likely is it that Clinton will take the following military actions? (percent saying somewhat to very likely)
62% Send U.S. troops to Bosnia 88% Renew military action against Iraq
NEWSWEEK Poll, Jan. 14-15, 1993
