Going the Last Mile

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

Bill Clinton's final sales campaign began last Thursday with an anxious burst of phone calls. Yet just five hours before the House would vote on his budget bill, he still lacked a majority. On the phone with Pat Williams, Montana's sole Representative, Clinton found no bargaining leverage. Unlike most of the other legislators with whom Clinton had been cutting deals all week, Williams asked for no specific trade-off in return for his vote. "Pat," Clinton finally pleaded, "I can't pass this without your vote, and my presidency depends on getting this thing through." But Williams refused to commit. A liberal from a conservative state, he opposed some of the bill's spending cuts as well as the gasoline tax. So he went to the floor weighted with ambivalence, hoping to vote no but fearing to be the agent of paralysis.

A few minutes after 10 p.m., as the electronic counter tabulated the vote in progress, Democratic party whips realized that just three members controlled the outcome: Williams, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky of Pennsylvania and Ray Thornton of Arkansas. If two of them voted no, the bill would be kaput. Williams went to Thornton, hoping that he would vote yes, thereby removing the need for Williams to do so, but the Representative from Little Rock had never intended to go with Clinton. He had already made his concession to the Democratic leadership, which was to withhold his no decision until late enough in the roll call so that an Arkansan would not be a bad example to fence sitters.

Williams turned to Margolies-Mezvinsky, a newcomer from a normally Republican district who had gone against the budget in the first round. She remained unsatisfied with the budget's feeble effort to curb entitlements. She too had heard from Clinton, just 15 minutes earlier: Marjorie, how can I get your support? Margolies-Mezvinsky named an unusual price: Come to my district and preside over a high-visibility conference -- including all concerned interests -- on checking the cost of entitlements. They talked it through for a few minutes until Clinton said, "Let's do it." Now, at 10:15, the electronic tabulation was complete, and the scoreboard showed 216-216. Deadlock would have meant defeat. Whereupon Williams and Margolies-Mezvinsky went to the rostrum and cast their ayes on paper. "I did it not so much for the budget," Williams said, "as for movement. My vote was to help us set sail again."

The House cliff-hanger was the prelude to another in the Senate. Early on Friday the Administration found itself still shy of a victory by just one vote, the holdout being Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, known among his colleagues as "Cosmic Bob" for his epic bouts of indecision. What struck White House officials most about Kerrey's resistance was what a senior Administration official described as the "inchoate" nature of his demands. Kerrey wasn't asking for anything specific. He didn't want a post office in Omaha or a dam on the Platte River. Instead he was advocating a more aggressive effort on Clinton's part in selling the country on a disciplined fiscal life-style, one involving less consumption and more investment. Kerrey urged that Clinton -- who had defeated him in the presidential primaries -- display more "spirit," more "energy" in preaching reform. The President, he said, should evoke the styles of F.D.R. and J.F.K. After delivering that message during a Thursday luncheon with senior Clinton advisers, Kerrey went to an afternoon movie, What's Love Got to Do with It. That prompted one waggish official to suggest that Tina Turner be enlisted to lobby the Senator.

Kerrey was enjoying his moments in the sun. His antechamber looked like the White House pressroom, with a dozen camera crews and a clutch of reporters seeking clues from Kerrey's typically elliptical ruminations. Sample: "This ((bill)) could be the first step towards something good or the first step towards something bad. This could be the first step to hell."

Friday morning Kerrey met with Clinton in the family quarters for a 90- minute chat that one official described as almost entirely philosophical. Kerrey urged the President to, as he said repeatedly, "connect." Al Gore joined the meeting briefly, and Kerrey spoke separately with chief of staff Mack McLarty. Later, Finance Committee chairman Pat Moynihan went to Kerrey to say, essentially, If you don't vote our way, this whole ball game is over: the North American Free Trade Agreement, health care, national service -- everything.

) At this point, colleagues were beginning to get fed up with Kerrey's coy approach. Said a Senate leadership aide: "A lot of people here really resent having to go over there to court the guy. We didn't think it was a perfect bill, but it was the best compromise that we could get." Two hours before the final vote in the Senate, Democratic Senators Thomas Daschle of South Dakota and Harry Reid of Nevada walked into Kerrey's office. Both looked grim. When they emerged half an hour later, neither was smiling. Asked if they were confident that the President had the votes he needed to win passage of his plan, Daschle said, "Not yet."

Soon afterward, two of Kerrey's staff members walked into his office, carrying bags of takeout Chinese food. Not much later, Kerrey called Clinton in the Oval Office; the President took the word of Kerrey's decision calmly and thanked him for his support. At 8:30, an hour before the vote, Kerrey emerged and said he was going to the floor to give his speech. There he took the opportunity to bash Clinton's bill one more time. "The truth, Mr. President, is in fact that the price of their proposal is too low. It's too little to watch the greatness needed from Americans now at this critical moment in their world's history."

But it was all the challenge Congress could bear. With Kerrey on board and Gore's tie-breaking vote, Clinton had the bare minimum he needed. As he had been doing all week, Clinton on Saturday rewarded loyal legislators by inviting them to unwind with him. He went to play golf with Pat Williams and two other Democrats who had seen the light.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Nancy Traver/Washington