EVERYBODY DOES IT

By Michael Kinsley

In every presidential election from 1968 through 1988, the Democrats nominated a goody-goody (Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis). And they lost every election during those two decades except in 1976, when the Republicans also nominated a goody-goody (Gerald Ford). In 1992 the Democrats finally got--well, you might say cynical or you might say serious. They decided they wanted to win this time. So they nominated a man who is no one's idea of a goody-goody. They nominated a slippery politician. Not coincidentally, he is also a morally flawed character with personal and (perhaps) financial peccadilloes.

Bill Clinton had not been President more than five minutes before many Democrats began reacting in horror to the realization that their man was not a plaster saint. Many Republicans, meanwhile, seemed resentful that the Democrats had stolen the election through the devious device of nominating someone who knew how to win.

It is pretty clear now that even if Clinton is re-elected, he is destined never to enjoy a period, as even Richard Nixon did, of genuine and heartfelt popularity while in office. The best he can probably hope for is a couple of weeks of golden-glow nostalgia when he leaves office in 2001 and a historical re-evaluation some decades down the road. It is fortunate for Clinton that our voting system doesn't measure intensity of feelings, because his opponents dislike him with a seething passion while his supporters can rarely muster more than grudging acquiescence.

But why is that? Is Clinton's opportunistic floppery on, say, balancing the budget any more egregious than Bob Dole's on, say, abortion? Ronald Reagan's California business chums bought him a house while he was President, to barely a peep of protest; yet we are in our fourth year of pawing through the much smaller financial favors Clinton's Arkansas business chums tried to do him 14 years ago when he was Governor.

Yes, of course, repeat after your mother: " 'Everybody does it' is no excuse." But why is Clinton's "character" such a liability to him, when by any reasonable reckoning his professional and personal failings average out to a level of moral compromise so typical among Presidents and presidential candidates that it almost amounts to a job qualification?

Part of the answer lies in Republican strategy. With not much cooking on the foreign front, and with the economic issues that usually decide elections divisible into those that look pretty good right now (growth, unemployment, inflation, the deficit) and those for which the Republicans have nothing much to suggest (wage stagnation, middle-class angst), "character" is naturally a tempting theme. Part of the answer lies with the media. Skeptical scrutiny of Presidents, it seems, is on a permanent upward ratchet. This is a good thing, by and large, but rough on the incumbent. And part of the answer lies with Clinton himself. Not that his moral failings are worse than other politicians'. But his relative youth (which is not his fault) and his occasional callowness (which is) deprive him of gravitas.

The anonymous novel Primary Colors is especially good on the way Clinton's bad qualities and good qualities are two sides of the same coin. His ability to deliver a moving speech on great occasions is related to his ability to talk utter baloney with seeming sincerity. (Reagan was a "great communicator." Clinton, his opponents say dismissively, is a "masterly politician." What's the difference?) His enormous hunger for approval is what has led him to chase voters and to chase women, and his enormous capacity for empathy helps explain why he is apparently so good at both. The empathy is genuine. And--for all the mockery of "I feel your pain," for all the telling parallels between Clinton's political and personal "promiscuity"--it is his most valuable gift as a national leader.

It is hard to turn this point into a useful campaign slogan. "Vote for Clinton. He's Not So Bad." "Re-elect the President. He's No Worse Than All the Others." Or "Bill Clinton: You Can't Have the French Fries Without the Grease." I don't recommend this theme to the Democratic National Committee. But it is pretty close to the truth.

As a Clinton supporter of moderate but steady enthusiasm, I've been bewildered by those liberals who've veered from wild ardor in 1992 to foaming dislike in the years since. The intense hatred Clinton evokes among conservatives is less puzzling but still a bit strange. Not since F.D.R., probably, has a Democratic President inspired such emotions in his opponents. But the F.D.R. comparison merely adds to the puzzle, since Clinton's agenda is far more modest and less ideologically charged.

Maybe an explanation lies in that old joke about academia, where, it is said, "the disputes are so vicious because the stakes are so small." The differences between Bill Clinton's agenda and Bob Dole's agenda are negligible in comparison with our political culture's huge need for rhetoric and disagreement between now and November. That means it's probably going to be an especially vicious campaign.