Clinton Wanders, But Never Too Far

When the history of this era is written by some dispassionate scholar, it surely will classify Bill Clinton as the mental health president because he is driving two large groups of Americans absolutely out of their minds.

Clinton makes Republicans crazy because they see him stealing their best ideas. Republicans holler that this is some kind of cynical flimflam designed to hide Clinton’s liberal nature.

Similarly, he drives liberal Democrats crazy because they fear that he has abandoned the compassionate heritage of the party when he latches onto these “conservative” ideas.

What they both overlook is that the source of their frustration - Clinton the “new Democrat” - has been around awhile. His is a combination of belief in a role for government and a determination to limit the size of government; of belief in doing for people things they cannot do for themselves, tempered by a feeling that people should take personal responsibility wherever they can. Sort of the best of both worlds. This was basically how he presented himself four years ago. As governor of Arkansas he pushed education AND the death penalty.

Republicans have chanted, “Liberal, liberal, pants on fire” so long in Clinton’s direction that they believe it. But Clinton never was Tom Harkin or Mario Cuomo. Clinton may wander around at times, leaving you uncertain about where he finally will stand on a particular issue (as did Franklin D. Roosevelt), but he usually winds up within the parameters of the moderate-to-conservative Democratic Leadership Council.

The DLC, remember, was born not to turn its back on the idealism of the Democratic Party but to undo what so many Americans had come to see as the unbalanced, too-far-to-the-left swing of the party. “New” Democrats, as moderate as the electorate, were the answer.

And there is nothing wrong with adopting a few Republican ideas. Republicans sometimes have good ideas. I find that I like several current Republican proposals, but I would sleep better if it were the Democrats, and not House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in charge of accomplishing them. Was it crass, in Clinton’s acceptance speech, for him to mention such “conservative” things as a victim’s rights amendment, enterprise zones and requirements that Congress obey its own laws? Not really. It doesn’t matter who has a bright idea as long as somebody acts on it.

For that matter, if Republicans would adopt a few more Democratic ideas, they might not sound quite so much like they were about to enjoy foreclosing on somebody’s farm.

The best themes often are non-partisan.

Let’s see, which party says it is against lifting people out of poverty? Which party wants more dangerous streets? Has either presidential candidate spoken highly of irresponsible parents? If so, I missed it.

Perhaps it is because he is ahead in the polls (whatever that’s worth), but Clinton seemed determined the other night to speak to the better angels of America’s nature.

The challenge to “every business person who has ever complained about the failure of yesterday’s welfare system to hire someone off the welfare rolls” is an example of something important in a human sense.

And the part I liked best was reminiscent of George Bush’s “thousand points of light.” That was the part about teaching every 8-year-old to read. Its origins? Well, it goes back to the “it takes a village” theme. It is about volunteerism. It is about a real sense of community. And it would be cheap.

Think about it: an army of volunteers teaching kids to read so they will have a shot at competing their way up the ladder of education and into the high-tech international economy of the next century.

Best of all, the volunteers can be liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, or Methodist or whatever. They can belong to unions or to the National Association of Manufacturers.

This fellow Clinton bears watching. He may drive his own folks and the other folks nuts, but most of his ideas, borrowed or not, are far from crazy.