The Political Interest It's the Job, Stupid

By Michael Kramer

Bill Clinton jets across the country and shoots hoops with a bunch of inner- city kids at the scene of a devastating race riot. A political slam dunk, right? Maybe not. For some of the wiser heads around Clinton, that campaign- style stop last week represented everything that's wrong with the President's self-described effort to "refocus" his presidency and win public support for his economic prescriptions. "A neat stunt for another time," says a Clinton adviser. "But the President traded baskets in the Los Angeles ghetto, where we've done about as much as Bush to improve things, which is nothing. Meanwhile, back home in Washington, members of our own party were combining to torpedo our economic program. Someone isn't thinking straight."

Appealing beyond Congress and over the heads of the lobbyists who adore the status quo should and can work, "but only if the exercise is conducted intelligently," says an Administration official. "Our salesman is welcome, and our product is better than the alternative" (the budget proposal offered by Senator David Boren, which would increase the deficit-cutting burden on those least able to take a greater hit). "It's our selling strategy that stinks. It's inherently unpresidential, and it's locked in simplistic assumptions about how the country gets its information."

Consider Clinton's latest beyond-the Beltway forays (and leave aside Haircutgate), which have affected the President's performance ratings not a whit, according to private Democratic Party polls. Clinton's greatest triumph at his San Diego town meeting was to make a hero of Lorne Fleming, who wondered why the President's pledge of a tax cut for the middle class had gone south. "Here was a chance for the President to be a President," says a Clinton confidant, "a chance to say the tax cut is out given changed economic circumstances. Instead, his innate desire to please caused him to all but repeat his promise," tempering it only by pleading for more time to deliver.

"The problem," continues this Clintonista, "is that even if that is true, it reinforces the Slick Willie impression. The President's forgotten that many of those who voted for him held their nose when they pulled the lever. It's his hardest chore, disciplining himself to stand up, to take the heat and make the hard call. The White House thinks those town-hall forums show how smart Clinton is, how he knows all the details. They won that battle long ago. What people want now is results."

Over time, Clinton's trips can build confidence in his governance, and as Lincoln said, "Public opinion is everything. With it nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." But several top Clinton aides say the President should stay home and address to the country from the Oval Office. Speaking for the national interest, they argue, requires a sober venue commensurate with the stakes. Like John Kennedy, however, Clinton fears overexposure. He is well aware that Franklin Roosevelt gave only four fireside chats during his first year in office (and only four more during his first term). Clinton knows too that it was F.D.R. himself who said "the public psychology cannot . . . be attuned for long periods of time to a constant repetition of the highest note in the scale." But as Theodore Sorensen has written, Kennedy (like Roosevelt) wasn't shy about using set speeches and Oval Office addresses "for truly important business." There's a time to use the presidency's prestige to stir the public in a way that gets Congress's attention. That time is now.