A Look At Clinton At His Best And At His Worst

HE DUMPED A FRIEND WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO LOOK HER IN THE EYE

Last of two parts

It was a difficult meeting for Bill Clinton.

Lani Guinier was an old friend, and Clinton had nominated her for a big job in his young administration. But she had come under unexpectedly fierce political attack. Now Clinton was going to withdraw her nomination.

The two old friends talked for 75 minutes in the Oval Office, but Clinton never looked Guinier in the eye to tell her to her face that she was through. Instead he waited until 30 minutes after she had left, then delivered the unpleasant message by phone.

Moments later, a visibly shaken president appeared in the White House briefing room and told the press.

Biting his lip, eyes glistening, Clinton defended his decision as one of principle, insisting that he would have stood by Guinier despite all odds except that, belatedly, he recognized he could not defend her views.

“This was a very … this was one of the most painful meetings I’ve ever had in my life. But I did what I thought was right,” Clinton said, his voice choked with emotion.

He left the room in haste and appeared to be on the verge of bursting into tears.

It would be difficult to find a more revealing example of what critics - and even supporters - find troubling about Bill Clinton than what he did to his friend Lani Guinier.

He put her under the hot spotlight of public scrutiny by nominating her for the post of assistant attorney general for civil rights in April 1993. Then he let her twist in the wind of stormy controversy for weeks while he dithered over whether to stand by her.

Finally he turned his back on her, abandoned her without a fight in June 1993 - and didn’t even look her in the eye to tell her he was dumping her.

The Guinier episode exposed flaws that repeatedly marred Clinton’s presidency, especially in its first 18 months. It showed weakness and procrastination in the Oval Office. Perhaps worst, it showed a president uncertain of what he stands for, yielding under pressure.

Similar indecision by the president in the face of a difficult political challenge led to 2-1/2 years of handwringing over Bosnia before Clinton finally acted decisively there in July 1995.

And similar reversals of position - such as over whether to cut taxes or raise them; whether to tie trade with China to human rights or not; and whether to accept the Republican version of welfare reform or veto it as cruel to poor children - became a Clinton trademark. Such flip-flops caused widespread confusion over what Clinton stands for - over what, if any, values he holds sacred deep down in his core.

“I think it told us two lessons, neither of them very good,” said Bert Rockman, a presidential scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, referring to the Guinier episode.

“One is, this guy is hopelessly disorganized,” Rockman said, adding that Clinton’s June 1994 appointment of Leon Panetta as chief of staff added much-needed discipline to the White House.

“Second, an even less desirable trait … Once he has propped people up, he has no problem with leaving them hanging out to dry. And she’s not the only one, either,” Rockman said.

“For a guy whose major claim is to feel your pain with empathy, that’s not so good. These were close friends. This is the kind of thing George Bush would never do.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton selected Guinier to become the assistant attorney general for civil rights; the first lady screened all her husband’s nominees for top Justice Department jobs.

Diversity of gender and ethnicity were key criteria in the selection process, but other political considerations - such as whether Guinier might pass muster with mainstream opinion in Congress - apparently were overlooked.

The president nominated Guinier on April 29, 1993. By naming her to be the nation’s top enforcer of civil-rights law, Clinton put himself behind her views. She knew what she stood for; apparently he did not.

The next day Guinier came under fierce conservative attack on the influential editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where her views on affirmative action were blasted in a column titled “Clinton’s Quota Queens.”

Guinier insisted that image was a distortion; she said she did not advocate quotas. But in scholarly writings, she had advocated such controversial measures as overriding the principle of majority rule in some circumstances to assure that racial minorities held a share of political power.

Even many Democrats believed that pushed affirmative action too far.

After reviewing Guinier’s essays six weeks before her nomination, one Clinton aide had warned White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum that her views could sink the new president in a boiling sea of racial politics.

But Nussbaum - another of Hillary Clinton’s hires - shrugged off the warning and assured the president that Guinier was okay, according to author Elizabeth Drew’s book “On the Edge,” a chronicle of Clinton’s first year in power.

Guinier quickly became a lightning rod for racial politics. Republicans portrayed her as radical. Liberal Democrats rallied around her. Moderate Democrats looked anxiously to Clinton for leadership.

But as the controversy escalated through May, Clinton neither fought for her nor pulled her back from the beating she was taking. As aides and Senate allies increasingly advised him to withdraw her nomination, the president procrastinated.

When called to account publicly on June 2 for where he stood on Guinier, the president uttered this illustration of how he had gained the sobriquet “Slick Willie”:

“I think that I have to talk to some of the senators about it because of the reservations that have been raised both publicly and privately … I think any reasonable reading of her writings would lead someone to conclude that a lot of the attacks cannot be supported. … And that’s not to say I agree with everything in the writings. I don’t. But I think a lot of what has been said is not accurate. On the other hand. …”

That day aides told Clinton the Senate never would confirm Guinier. He sent two emissaries to ask her to withdraw. She refused, defending herself that night on ABC-TV’s “Nightline.” The next day, the Congressional Black Caucus insisted publicly that Clinton stand behind her, raising pressure on him even while splitting Democratic ranks even wider.

On June 3, after Vice President Al Gore pressed Clinton to act decisively, the president read Guinier’s controversial articles. That evening he summoned her to the Oval Office.

After her dismissal, Guinier returned to teach at the University of Pennsylvania law school. She refuses to criticize Clinton publicly, and declined to speak for this article.

HE PUT PRESIDENCY ON THE LINE TO REVIVE THE NATION’S ECONOMY

Bill Clinton was about to give his first speech to Congress, and the stakes were huge.

He had spent the previous four weeks stumbling through one mini-crisis after another - gays in the military, fumbled Cabinet appointments - raising doubts about whether he was up to the job.

That night, four weeks after his inauguration, Clinton had to persuade the people anew that he was indeed fit to be their president. And he had to do it by selling his complex plan on how to revive the sluggish economy - the job he had been elected to do.

With the whole country watching, the young new president delivered a 60-minute tour de force. By turns engaging and commanding, this was Clinton at his best, leading the nation through the power of his presence and the suasion of his speech.

He wowed TV viewers. Initial polls showed the public backed Clinton’s plan 4-to-1. With that speech “it became clear that once again, America has a president with vision,” said Business Week magazine, no Democratic organ, comparing Clinton to Ronald Reagan.

Clinton would hit similar heights of leadership through oratory many times over the next four years - when launching his ambitious health care reform in September 1993; when mourning the Oklahoma City bombing victims in April 1995; when confronting the Republican Congress after their government-shutdown showdown in his State of the Union address last January - but this 1993 speech was his first, and most consequential, display of “presidential” mastery.

Because that speech kicked off a crusade that led to what arguably has been Clinton’s biggest accomplishment: He helped revive America’s lethargic economy.

Before it was over, he had put his presidency on the line and thrown every skill at his command into the fight; even then, he faltered along the way and almost lost in a “near-death experience” in Congress.

But in the end, he won.

“It was very hard to do. He saw it through … I think it was a major achievement in terms of the consequences,” said Bert Rockman, a scholar of the presidency at the University of Pittsburgh.

Clinton delivered on his biggest promise - economic revival - by tackling head-on the toughest political challenge facing the nation when he took office - the towering federal budget deficit.

The deficit had soared out of control since 1980, quadrupling the nation’s debt over the previous 12 years to $4 trillion, and threatening to saddle today’s children with a crushing financial burden.

Clinton helped chop more than half the deficit away with a bold, politically risky plan of attack. He dared to raise taxes as much as he cut spending. He made this Job One of his administration. Persuading Congress to go along consumed most of his first seven months in power.

In slashing the deficit, he helped set in motion financial forces - principally falling interest rates - that fueled three straight years of solid economic growth, booming private investment, and 10.5 million new jobs - two-thirds of them paying better-than-average wages.

To be sure, some critics say Clinton deserves little credit. They argue that the economy revived on its own and drove the deficit down. For Clinton to say he did it, says Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., “is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.”

But other, nonpartisan experts credit Clinton.

“The economy wouldn’t have performed so well if Clinton hadn’t put his behind on the line and cut the deficit,” summed up Stan Collender, a senior analyst with Price Waterhouse, the big accounting firm.

The plan that emerged had three main parts. One was a $30 billion “stimulus” to spur the economy immediately. Second was a $230 billion series of new five-year spending priorities - Clinton insisted on calling them “investments” - such as education, national service, and job training, for which he had campaigned hard.

Third and biggest was his proposal to cut projected deficits by $704 billion over five years - half by spending cuts, half by selected tax hikes. Combined with spending on his “investments,” on balance his original plan aimed to chop deficits by $473 billion over five years.

Then, characteristically, rather than bending his shoulder to the wheel of work ahead on Capitol Hill, Clinton dashed off immediately to public rallies for his plan in St. Louis and Chillicothee, Ohio. To him, governing was essentially an eternal campaign - but governing in Washington required more. It required working with Congress and fending off interest groups eager to change his program to their advantage.

Clinton wasn’t so good at that.

Congress quickly killed his stimulus program. Before long it had whacked back most of his investments, too. In the end his complex formula to revive the economy was stripped down to little more than a five-year, $500 billion deficit-reduction package.

And he barely won that.

Not a single Republican voted for it. Several House Democrats lost their next elections primarily because they did. And many of them felt betrayed by Clinton, because he had vowed never to abandon a controversial energy tax if only they would vote for it, but once they did, he dumped the tax when facing Senate opposition.

Along the way, Clinton cut deals for votes; he flattered, argued, traded and begged. Even so, he won only after two reluctant Democrats cast last-second votes in the House and Vice President Al Gore broke a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

“What it told us about him was he had a pretty high degree of flexibility and was willing to give and take in the process, but at any moment, it could have come down on his head,” said Rockman, the presidential scholar. “He had to fight between the Black Caucus in the House and the energy-state Democrats in the Senate. He did take it on. He did move it around. …

“The downside,” Rockman added, “was it revealed that this was a guy who was so infinitely flexible that, to legislators, that means - ‘bend him.”’

“It wasn’t a pretty package to put together,” admits George Stephanopoulos, a top Clinton aide, “but it was the right thing to do.”

The deficit was $290 billion in fiscal 1992. It has fallen each year since. It is now projected to be just $117 billion this year - 60 percent smaller.

America’s deficit today, relative to the economy, is the smallest of any major nation in the world.