Clinton Takes Lickin’, Keeps Kickin’

For Bill Clinton, hazard is a way of life. The chart of his political fortunes looks like the Rocky Mountains. Every time you think his goose is cooked, he finds some way to recover. Every time you think he has it made, he stumbles. Last week, he entered another stumblebum phase.

As David Maraniss pointed out in his biography of the president, “First in His Class,” Clinton always has lived his life on the edge. He courts risks the way others collect stamps. He tries for more than the odds allow. When his lunge for a prize fails, he often falls flat on his face. When he succeeds, his momentum often carries him over the top into dangerous hubris. Rarely can he maintain a comfortable cruising speed. But he is remarkably adept at getting himself back on track after a crash.

Given the pattern of Clinton’s life, it was utterly predictable that a period of highly favorable press clippings and landslide re-election polls would presage another downhill run on the roller coaster. Now that is happening. Such disparate events as a Little Rock jury verdict, an Israeli election, a gratuitously dumb legal brief and an arrogant campaign ad have combined to show once again that Clinton just can’t stand prosperity.

It is a familiar pattern. In the pre-election autumn of 1991, he was crowned as the almost inevitable Democratic presidential nominee, a candidate with fresh ideas facing what seemed to be a weak field. Boom! Gennifer Flowers and the draft-dodging stories hit and by the end of January 1992, he seemed to be dead meat.

But he revived his fortunes in New Hampshire, broke through in Georgia and was seemingly on his way. Boom! Ross Perot emerged from nowhere and suddenly Clinton was running in third place, behind both Perot and President Bush, in the general-election polls.

Over the summer, he gradually rebuilt his base, picked a popular running mate in Al Gore, and Perot retired (temporarily) at just the right moment to boost Clinton past Bush in the polls. While Bush foundered in Houston, the Clinton-Gore bus tours beguiled a jaded country and, despite Perot’s re-entry, a plurality of voters decided to live dangerously with the Rover Boys.

The transition period was a downer, but it was forgotten in an upbeat change-of-generations inaugural celebration that brought a dramatic rise in popular support for the incoming chief executive. Then, boom! Zoe Baird, gays in the military and other fiascos of the first weeks in office had pundits writing, prematurely, of a failed presidency.

By the fall of 1993, Clinton managed to squeeze through his first budget. NAFTA gave him a bipartisan victory and as the Christmas holidays approached, he seemed to be Santa’s favorite child. Boom! Somalia turned bloody. The aftermath of Vince Foster’s suicide reopened the Whitewater saga. Paula Jones and the Arkansas state troopers popped up with their accusations of sexual misconduct. The health reform plan - a classic Clinton overreach - turned into a political disaster and in 1994 the Republicans rode the backlash to a stunning midterm triumph.

In the first half of 1995, Clinton was pushed to the sidelines, vainly protesting his own “relevance.” But the congressional Republicans misjudged their mandate and scared the voters, and Clinton began another revival - his fourth or fifth. He outwitted his opponents in the end-of-the-year battle of the budget and escaped blame for government shutdowns.

“Triangulating” his way to the front, he played sensible centrist at home and world statesman in Bosnia. By the end of the Republican primary slugfest in March, he was far ahead of his November opponent, Bob Dole. The next two months were such a rout that Dole decided that Washington was not big enough for both of them - and bolted from his Senate home.

Boom! Israeli voters appeared to reject Clinton’s partner in the peace process and in Russia, Boris Yeltsin’s future seems clouded. In a Little Rock courtroom, Clinton’s Whitewater partners and his successor as governor are convicted of looting a failed savings and loan, despite testimony Clinton gave on their behalf. Now other trials and prosecutions loom. The character issue - Clinton’s Achilles’ heel - is back big-time.

Meanwhile, he once again starts overreaching. His lawyer in the Paula Jones case suggests that Clinton may be immunized against immediate prosecution under the terms of a law designed to protect active-duty military personnel. Veterans groups huff indignantly and the lawyer has to back off.

Simultaneously, Clinton’s campaign accuses Dole of “quitting” on his Senate responsibilities - a stunningly unseemly choice of words for a man who walked away from his Vietnam-era promise to join the National Guard and from his 1990 campaign promise to Arkansas voters to serve out his four-year term.

Here we go again.

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