TWO PEAS IN A POD

I rarely see them linked any more, even though they have similar nicknames. In fact, to many people they’re essence is defined by those nicknames. Like “Madonna,” and “Tiger” and “Elvis,” you needn’t mention their last names. Everyone knows who you’re talking about.

The two luminaries I have in mind are associated with the monikers of Slick Willie and Tricky Dick. They are so named because their numerous enemies knew them best for their ability to deceive. Yet they were also two-term Presidents, or at least they were elected to two terms. One was impeached but never had to leave. The other was never impeached but was forced to resign. One was done in by sex, the other by audio-tape, but both were widely associated with lies.

The problem is, few people understand their greatest lies of all: that Clinton was a Democrat, and Nixon a Republican.

Perhaps I am making a faulty assumption here that Democrats are liberals (or at least liberal moderates) and Republicans are conservatives. Clinton certainly would have avoided using the word “liberal” for himself, and yet he encouraged liberals to get the impression that he was one of them. This was the man who loved to hype his commitment to diversity, and who’s ostensibly libertine spirit was evidenced by getting on national TV and telling us whether he uses boxers or briefs. No self respecting conservative would ever make his crotch a campaign issue.

The rank-in-file liberals came to love Slick Willie and hate Tricky Dick, but liberals in the know understood the irony of these attitudes. Consider the recently published words of Paul Krugman, arguably the pre-eminent liberal columnist today. “[I]n practice, Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.”

If that truth were known, it would have embarrassed both Clinton and Nixon. For they knew where their bread was buttered. Nixon was a darling of the conservatives. And Clinton was so clearly accepted by the liberals that he stopped having to court their support, for he knew that support could be counted on. The question is, why?

Let’s start with Tricky Dick. Yes, the man began his career as a Red Baiter, and continued in the White House to govern as a bigot, with one of his final targets being the Jews. For those reasons alone, I can’t stand the guy. And yet … here was a man whose foreign policy was every bit as progressive as the Democrats who preceded him and followed him. (He did go to China, remember?) And here was a man whose economic policies indicated that he actually gave a damn about economic equity, the sine qua non of American liberalism.

President Nixon increased spending on social security and poverty programs. He also supported affirmative action and even invented the EPA. Now how again was this guy a conservative?

By contrast, Clinton – beloved friend of Streisand and other Hollywood lefties – presided over an economy that Klugman has termed the “New Gilded Age.” Manufacturing wages adjusted for inflation remains basically stagnant, whereas incomes of the richest Americans have gone through the roof. As for the poor, perhaps Clinton’s signature achievement is welfare reform. Unfortunately, his reforms have hardly been a Godsend for the poor. Yes, under Clinton, many poor people have left the welfare rolls, but they have hardly found the government support necessary to enjoy a livable wage. Liberal welfare reform doesn’t just make it harder for able-bodied schnorrers to stay on the dole. Liberal welfare reform combines that goal with a massive commitment to job training, increased educational opportunities, minimum wage increases, and massive expenditures to combat the scourge of mental illness. In short, liberal welfare reform reflects the waging of a war against poverty, which includes reducing dependency on government handouts but is hardly limited to it.

President Clinton vigorously supported capital punishment. By contrast, he never announced support for gay marriage. Yes, he was a supporter of affirmative action and the value of diversity, but that appears to be among the very few issues on which he could legitimately be called a liberal. In most respects, Clinton was a true conservative – not a reactionary, but a conservative. (The Clinton health care reform proposal was a “liberal” measure, but it was so clumsily handled as to hardly merit a mention in his list of accomplishments.) Liberals who see him as one of their own might take a closer look at Nixon if they’re looking for a progressive role model in their recent past.

Why am I so irked by Slick Willie’s ability to make liberals think of him as a fellow traveler? In part, it’s because I was drawn in myself, back before he came to the White House in 1992. But there’s a deeper reason. I find it shocking that liberal politicians are afraid to announce their true beliefs about hot button issues. “We don’t dare support gay marriage,” their handlers say, “’cause the right wingers would use that to wake up apathetic voters.” As a result, politicians after Clinton – as illustrated in the subsequent Presidential elections – necessarily come across as phonies who don’t really have a coherent vision of public policy. As a result, when the American electorate looks into their souls, they determine that the GOP candidates are more real and honest. So even though the Democrats “agree with the people on the issues,” the Republicans get elected to run the country.

Clinton was such a conservative that, according to public opinion polls, virtually every one of his views was embraced by the majority of Americans. Does that sound like a leader to you, or does that sound like an opportunistic follower? The fact is that Slick Willie may indeed be a liberal, or then again, he might be a conservative. We really have no basis for knowing. All we can say for sure is that he was a politician. And in the era after Tricky Dick and his minions changed the political culture of Washington, a “politician” is allowed to mislead every bit as much as a poker player. The only difference is that the poker player only wants your money, whereas the politician also wants your support. What do you say that going forward, we extend that to someone who tells us what they really mean, and why?