SITTING PRETTY

By Michael Kinsley

As Republicans assembled in Dallas to renominate Ronald Reagan 12 years ago, the incumbent President had already achieved mythic status. He led his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, by an impressive 14 points in the opinion polls. The re-election campaign was considered to be a virtual formality. Even Reagan's opponents conceded his "magic" and had all but given up seething about it. "Not since Dwight Eisenhower," wrote TIME in its convention issue, "has the U.S. public felt such fondness for its leader." TIME's Hugh Sidey declared of Reagan, "He is a refrain from Stars and Stripes Forever."

It is safe to predict that none of the thousands of journalists in Chicago this week to witness the renomination of Bill Clinton will choose that particular metaphor, or anything like it, to describe this year's incumbent President. Nor will anyone try to make the case--with a straight face--that Americans in general are particularly "fond" of their leader. Clinton faces a sullen press corps, a larger public that tolerates him at best, and a sizable opposition that despises him with extraordinary passion. Meanwhile, he lacks even a medium-size cadre of genuine enthusiasts. He doesn't have a single reliable journalistic hagiographer, though Reagan had a dozen. Indeed, do you know a single American citizen of any profession who is a real Clinton swooner, like the millions who swooned for Reagan? There are a few, but most of them work for him.

In 1984 people talked of Reagan's magic and meant it as a compliment. Today people talk of Clinton's trickery, and do not mean to be flattering. Reagan's rhetorical skills made him the "Great Communicator" (good); Clinton's make him "Slick Willie" (bad). These are journalists' characterizations, but the perception is widely shared, fairly or unfairly, by the public.

Even at the time of his first nomination four years ago, Clinton generated more electricity than he does today. Journalists were still impressed by his doggedness, his intelligence and policy enthusiasm, his charm. The newly acquainted public warmed to his family and his life story.

Although Clinton won the 1992 election with only 43% of the vote, there were moments of popular enthusiasm--such as that first postconvention bus tour--that are difficult to imagine this year. During Reagan's first four years, widespread suspicion melted into widespread affection. During Clinton's, something like the opposite has happened.

Yet Bill Clinton in 1996 has one amazing thing in common with Ronald Reagan in 1984: he is considered overwhelmingly likely to be re-elected. Clinton now leads in polls by nearly as much as Ronald Reagan did at his renomination in 1984. Despite Bob Dole's convention bounce, the pundits remain just as convinced that Clinton will beat Dole as they were that Reagan would beat Mondale. The polls and pundits could be wrong, of course, but the evidence is striking. People tell pollsters that they don't approve of Clinton's character or believe in his truthfulness but that they intend to vote for him anyway.

So this is the Clinton mystery: How can a president who arouses so little popular enthusiasm appear so likely to win re-election? If people don't like Clinton much or trust him much or respect him much, why are they so willing to vote for him?

There are politicians who specialize in being elected without being liked. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain is the leading example. Her take-your-medicine style of leadership did not require personal popularity. But the American electorate, unlike the British one, does not relish a spanking. And Clinton is certainly not a politician who is indifferent to popularity. His desperate, boyish eagerness to be liked by everybody is one of his most charming but least presidential attributes. So it is especially mysterious that Clinton, of all recent Presidents, should stand poised to win re-election without acquiring the widespread affection Reagan enjoyed and he, Clinton, wants so badly.

This is a mystery about us, not about him. A man as voluble as Clinton, who talks himself down to his underwear--the most famous person in a culture of celebrity and psychoanalysis--cannot remain an enigma for four years.

Enemy and friend alike feel by now that they have figured the man out. They don't even disagree that much on the diagnosis. All but the most poisonous enemies give Clinton at least some credit for his remarkable capacity for empathy, for his off-the-cuff eloquence, for his intelligence and sincere dedication to public policy. And he probably doesn't have a friend in the world who wouldn't concede, in private, his excessive appetites, his "slickness," his too-easy willingness to abandon people and principles.

But Clinton's enemies still wonder: How stupid can people be? How can the voters apparently see through this charlatan but go ahead and vote for him anyway? And Clinton's friends wonder: How ungrateful can people be? If Americans are content enough to re-elect Clinton, why do they hold him to a standard of character no successful politician could meet? Why won't they give him the kind of respect, if not adulation, a successful President in difficult times deserves?

There are explanations of varying degrees of persuasiveness. They come in flavors psychological, objective and political.

1. "COGNITIVE DISSONANCE"

That is how the fiercely anti-Clinton Wall Street Journal editorial page put it the other day, adding hopefully that this psychological condition "is an essential step in changing your mind." Put more crudely, Clinton's opponents simply believe he has got people conned: they should know he's a slime ball, but it hasn't sunk in. Back at the height of Reagan's popularity, voices like the Wall Street Journal labeled any such fancy-pants theorizing by Reagan's opponents--any suggestion that the people don't know their own mind--as "contempt for democracy." But that was then.

Clinton's supporters have their own cognitive-dissonance theory: Americans have been bamboozled by a vicious, well-financed conservative opposition, and by an unsympathetic press corps, into believing that Clinton is deeply morally flawed. But they support his policies and perhaps will come to reappraise him personally on the basis of his manifest desire to make life better for them.

2. HE'S A POLITICIAN, AFTER ALL

Some Clinton opponents have an even darker psychological explanation, which is that Americans have become so cynical about politics that they expect their elected officials to be morally compromised--liars, unprincipled political opportunists, financial finaglers--and no longer hold egregious vices against the politicians they vote for. A variation on this theory blames the press and the political system for scandal overload. Overdosing on exposes and special prosecutors, the public--while amiably willing to believe in general that politicians are corrupt--has lost its capacity for outrage at any particular new disclosure. A Clinton-friendly version of this theory holds that the mud doesn't stick because it shouldn't stick.

A more sophisticated pro-Clinton version goes like this: Americans are no more cynical than they have always been. Sure, Clinton is a slick politician and a morally flawed human being--but so is Dole, and so were other Republican presidential candidates of recent years. It's just that in the years between Lyndon Johnson and Clinton, the Democrats got in the habit of nominating high-minded, too-good-for-this-world types like George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis. Not coincidentally, they also got in the habit of losing elections. So finally in 1992 the Democrats nominated somebody who was not too fastidious to win. Unsurprisingly, he is not so fastidious in his private affairs either. It may seem like cheating for the Democrats to behave so professionally. But it works.

3. IT REALLY IS THE ECONOMY, STUPID

Leave the fancy psychological theorizing aside. Times are good. Growth is steady, unemployment and inflation are low, the deficit is way down. Elections in peacetime are always a referendum on the economy. Voters may not be certain whether Clinton deserves the credit, but they may not care. They won't dislodge the incumbent under these sunny circumstances.

Somewhat comically, in our political culture of grievance, almost no one is willing to admit that times actually are pretty good. Polls show the citizenry fairly gloomy about general economic prospects even while conceding that their own prospects are O.K. Republicans are reduced to grumbling that modest, steady growth is not good enough and that Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board, rather than Clinton, deserve the credit in any event. (There's an inherent contradiction here: If the Fed sets the rate of growth, how can Clinton be blamed that it's not faster?) Clinton, meanwhile, has the happier but still tricky task of taking credit for our wonderful economic condition without seeming complacent about our terrible economic grievances.

4. THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

Will the historic midterm election of 1994, which gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, be seen in retrospect as the key to the first re-election of a Democratic President in 52 years (since F.D.R.'s last term)? In the months leading up to the '94 election, especially with the collapse of his ambitious health-care reform, Clinton seemed like "dead meat," to use the dainty Beltway terminology. At first the Republican revolution made Clinton's doom seem even more certain. But it hasn't worked out that way. Many have noted the irony: elected on a promise to end Washington gridlock, Clinton may get re-elected as the guarantor of gridlock. He is Horatius at the bridge, our lonely defender against the Newtite hordes. Or (less partisan version): Americans have discovered that they like gridlock, as a protection against the excesses of both parties. They have not turned against the Republican vision of smaller government--they just don't trust Speaker Gingrich to control himself.

American voters are hypocritical about many things, but none more so than "change." They want it, until it looks as if they might get it. "Change" was Clinton's mantra in 1992. Yet fear of change was a powerful force for the Republicans once he was elected. The most effective theme in their campaign against Clinton's health-care reform, for example, was that you might--might--not be able to keep your same doctor. So the Republicans got control of Congress, also promising change, and also got stung when they tried to deliver change.

Of course, Americans are in for a disappointment if they think they can somehow enjoy the benefits of the Republican small-government revolution while President Clinton protects them from the cost. Republicans are understandably furious at Clinton for implying that he can produce this alchemy (although Dole is now promising the same magic). And they are understandably annoyed that the voters, having invited them to conduct their revolution, should now seem inclined to punish them for doing so. It's hard not to sympathize: the Republicans made the rare mistake, upon taking over Congress, of acting on their principles--after 14 years and two G.O.P. Administrations of merely talking about them. Presumably they've learned their lesson.

5. "DICK MORRIS"

These two words (the name of Clinton's chief campaign guru) are shorthand for the proposition that Clinton's apparently winning re-election strategy is essentially to become a Republican. Clinton's conservative opponents see this as both an explanation and a consolation: even if he wins, they are prepared to claim a moral victory. There is obviously something to this, but there is a large pshaw factor as well. "Capture the center" is the usual game in politics, and Republicans have played it skillfully over the years. Once again, there seems to be a feeling that for a Democrat to play it just as skillfully is somehow cheating.

Both American political parties have survived long term by accommodating reality. You don't hear Dole repeating his gaffe of a few months ago, reminding voters that he opposed Medicare back in 1965. Republicans have made their peace with Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare and so on. Any attempts to prune or reform these programs, however justifiable, are urgently identified as efforts to "save" them. Similarly, Clinton won election, and seems to be winning re-election, by leading his party's adjustment to the political landscape created by Reagan. Republicans have the delicate challenge of arguing simultaneously that Clinton has stolen the G.O.P. agenda and that he is a dangerous left-winger. Both views are exaggerations, and they are obviously incompatible.

6. "BOB DOLE"

These two words are shorthand for the proposition that the solution to the Clinton mystery is his opponent. Even many Republicans seem to believe that only by nominating a hopeless candidate could they manage to be losing to such a vulnerable incumbent. If Dole in fact loses, the question of how a ruthlessly efficient election machine like the modern Republican party managed to bungle its nomination so badly will be oft pondered. Even if he wins somehow, the question probably won't go away.

How did it happen? Dole, goodness knows, represents no strong ideological position. He has no large popular following. He has no natural campaign skills that cry out to be exploited. Although an admirable person in many ways, Dole is not, in short, the end point of any rational selection process for a major party's presidential nomination. In retrospect, the Republicans seem to have anointed Dole out of such admirably unpragmatic, old-fashioned motives as honoring achievement and deference to seniority that were thought to be long dead in the Grand Old Party. Which brings us to...

7. LUCK

The last explanation for the Clinton mystery. Is this the luckiest guy around, or what? Count on that becoming a theme if Clinton wins. He wins the presidency with a minority of the vote, he loses Congress for his party and it ends up helping him, the opposition party accidentally gives its nomination to a hopeless candidate: these are just the latest lucky breaks for a politician who fortuitously, as a teenager, had his picture taken with President John Kennedy. No wonder he still believes in a place called Hope!

But luck is just a residual explanation for what can't be explained. And luck still could change.

For continuous convention coverage, see the TIME/CNN Website at AllPolitics.com