Crime Bill Vote Big Setback For Clinton

When the history books are written, Thursday just may be recalled as the day President Clinton’s luck - and with it his effectiveness - finally ran out.

For more than a year-and-a-half, Clinton, despite being elected with only 43 percent of the vote, has managed to eke out of Congress a series of one and two vote victories - “Clinton landslides,” his aides joked. Thursday, they stopped joking.

When the House rejected the $33 billion crime bill and its leaders informed the White House they would probably have to wait until September even to begin floor debate on health care, the chief rationale for Clinton’s presidency - that he could “break gridlock” in Washington - suffered two grievous blows.

Setbacks this large would damage any president. But for Clinton, who has held out “effectiveness” as the chief counter to Americans’ widespread questions about his character, the damage is far worse. For him, a series of legislative defeats would leave little to stand on.

Administration officials, confident that the crime bill enjoys overwhelming public support, spoke defiantly about bringing the bill back. “Voting no is the wrong side to be on on this issue,” said one White House strategist. Officials also insisted that despite the scheduling setbacks, health care reform will prevail in the end. If either of those things happens, those major victories could erase much of this week’s damage.

Moreover, anticipating large Democratic losses this fall, White House aides already had been laying plans for moving from a strategy based on legislative accomplishments to one based on more populist, more sharply toned, attacks on opponents.

Clinton previewed that strategy in an angry press conference after the crime bill vote - vowing to fight on and denouncing opponents for bowing to “special interests.”

“I worked my heart out on it and I did everything I could. And on this day the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the Republican leadership had their way,” Clinton said.

Some aides hope that sort of approach, less tied to negotiating endless compromises through Congress, could revive Clinton’s standing with voters. In any case, Clinton has little choice. “If your platform is getting stuff done and you can’t get anything done, you better find a new platform,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

But even if that shift in strategy should prove effective in the future, for now Clinton strategists made no attempt to hide their gloom. “This is very bad,” said one. “It’s beyond gridlock.”

For months, Clinton and his aides had held up the advancing crime bill as the symbol of his ability to break gridlock with “New Democrat” ideas that bridged the divides between liberals and conservatives. Because of that, the failure of this particular legislation suggests that the institutional, ideological and partisan roots of gridlock are even more difficult to reach than the President believed.

White House officials were quick to blame the problem on Clinton’s Republican opposition. But while the Republicans did run a fierce campaign against Clinton all year, they were not his main problem.

Democratic vote counters had predicted they could win if they got 10 Republican votes; 11 Republicans sided with them, and they still lost. The reason was Democratic defections, and the defectors shows Clinton’s problem.

Among them were fellow southerners for whom alliance with Clinton has become a political millstone. The unwillingness of 58 members of his own party to link arms with Clinton on a major issue resembled nothing so much as the unraveling of the last Democrat to win the Oval Office, Jimmy Carter. And the fact that many Congressional Democrats have dramatically and perhaps irrevocably severed their interests from Clinton clearly cannot bode well for health care.