The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

Lyndon Johnson used to say that a good politician can "make chicken salad out of chicken s." Judged by that recipe, Bill Clinton is a master -- at least rhetorically. Consider last Wednesday, when the President dealt with two substantively unrelated issues, one foreign, one domestic.

On Bosnia, the President said, "Our nation will not stand idly by in the face of a conflict that offends our consciences." Sound familiar? During the 1992 campaign, Clinton said, "History has shown that you can't allow the mass extermination of people and just sit idly by and watch it happen." Between then and now, about all that's happened is that the number of idle threats has come to rival the death toll. But I really mean it this time, Clinton insists: If the Serbs don't cease their strangulation of Sarajevo, fire will rain from the air next week -- more than five months after the very same pledge was first uttered by NATO last August.

O.K., assume the planes do finally fly. What exactly will this latest expression of faux muscularity achieve? "Air power alone" won't end the war, says the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It's bombing as therapy," says Michael Mandelbaum, a Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert who advised Clinton during the campaign. "Therapy for us, that is; proof that we've done something at last -- even if the Serbs simply move their heavy weapons and strike elsewhere, or hunker down till the dust clears." Ground troops could settle the conflict, but Clinton has ruled them out. He says he favors lifting the arms embargo so the Bosnians can defend themselves on a level killing field, but he has yet to seriously push his preference.

What's left is the bargaining table, which sounds fine unless the White House's promise to "encourage" Muslim flexibility only means that the Muslims should roll over and become good victims. Whatever the final resolution -- if there is one -- political pressure without military force will never produce an equitable solution. Can anyone doubt that aggression and genocide will ultimately be rewarded; that Bosnia, if it survives at all, will barely resemble its former self; and that the "bold tyrants watching to see whether 'ethnic cleansing' is a policy the world will tolerate" (to use Secretary of State Warren Christopher's words) will have their answer? What will Clinton the saladmaker do and say then? He'll ignore the capitulation, crow that his artful diplomacy produced a negotiated peace and turn anew to the domestic battles that interest him most.

That brings us to Clinton's drug strategy, which he introduced last Wednesday in the same slick way he handled Bosnia. The President portrayed his moves as a grand departure from the drug wars of previous Administrations. Gone, though, is Clinton's promise to provide addicts with "treatment on demand" and his pledge to spend more money on education and prevention than on law enforcement. If approved by Congress, Clinton's overall antidrug budget will climb about $1 billion, but even after including the dubious allocation of $285 million for community policing as a "prevention and treatment" expense, the ratio split will still favor enforcement 59% to 41% -- down only $ slightly from George Bush's emphasis, which had the ratio at 65% to 35%.

More worrisome is the shortfall between those cocaine and heroin addicts who desperately need treatment and those who will actually get it. Depending on which Administration document one reads, the total number of needy addicts ranges between 1.1 million and 2.7 million people. Whatever the best guess, Clinton's new dollars will aid only 74,000 addicts. "It's inexplicable," says Mathea Falco, who ran the Carter Administration's interdiction efforts as the first Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters. "Everyone in the field, and Clinton too, knows the supply-side efforts have largely failed. Clinton's effort moves in the right direction, but at a pace that won't have a significant impact in our time. With the money he proposes, he can't even seriously reach a quarter of the pregnant addicts he promised to help as soon as he took office."

Equally distressing is how Clinton has shortchanged the drug-education budget. The White House claims that its $191 million increase will ensure that "all children" will receive the antidrug message "effectively." The math is goofy. Only half the nation's 47 million schoolchildren are exposed to any form of drug education today; Clinton's new funds will move that figure to 60%, at best.

The President contends that every dollar spent on drug education and treatment yields "a $7 investment" as crime and prison costs fall and economic productivity rises. Why then has he shifted away from what he knows he should do? "You can't appear soft on crime when crime hysteria is sweeping the country," explains an Administration official candidly. "Maybe the national temper will change, and maybe, if it does, we'll do it right later."

Presidential leadership is often defined as the ability to rally the nation to unpopular causes. Leadership also demands that a President forthrightly explain why actions aren't taken or why they are paltry compared with past rhetoric. Clinton is doing neither. Unfortunately, on the streets of both Bosnia and America, the consequences of that behavior produce casualties that far transcend the President's own diminished moral and political credibility.