On this day in 1994, Bill Clinton’s presidency was saved.
It didn’t look that way at the time. After threatening to keep Congress in session until a health-care bill was passed, then Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell gave up and let members return home for their recess. The legislative push for universal health care never recovered, and scarcely 11 weeks later Republicans led by Newt Gingrich woke up to find that they had just won control of both houses of Congress.
Mr. Clinton’s presidency, however, did recover. And though the Republican revolution in Congress would ultimately run aground, in retrospect we can see two important legacies: It helped usher in a new era of prosperity for the American people, and in the process helped Mr. Clinton save his presidency.
Today the lesson that President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress take from that 1994 defeat is that they need to avoid Mr. Clinton’s “mistakes.” Avoiding mistakes, however, is not a winning strategy. A far more productive strategy would be to embrace Mr. Clinton’s success, which was freeing himself from his party’s left and returning to the centrist themes he had campaigned on.
I don’t really disagree with McGurn’s take, here. But I do rather doubt Obama has the political smarts that Clinton had. Oh, he’s even more savagely partisan than Clinton and even more ruthless. But he hasn’t got the acumen or experience Clinton had learned in his years in Arkansas. And he certainly does not have high caliber advisers, as should be evident from some of the clueless responses the White House has made to any number of issues.
That and I suspect Obama’s narcissism makes Clinton the narcissist look like Mr. Altruism.
I would not hold my breath for a move to the center by Obama.
Obama is saddled by one other disadvantage that Clinton didn’t have: his dependence on the very left of which McGurn urges him to free himself. The Left was very much the fringe back in 1994, but 15 years later, it’s firmly entrenched in the core of the Democratic Party, and there is no way to win a primary, let alone beat the GOP, without them. Howard Dean has made damned sure that Barack Obama will never be another BIll Clinto — and don’t think for a minute that that was unintentional.
Clinton’s laissez faire handling of the economy(save the tax increase) cannot be repeated by Obumble, nor the dotcom bubble, together saving his fabulist butt.
This Presidency was lost to posterity in 150 days by a talentless Flim Flam artist. Maybe he can transform to minister of some syncretist faith.