What exactly does Bill Clinton stand for, if anything? Well, we know that he is standing for re-election, but beyond that he does not seem to have a clear direction or solid view on anything. His State of the Union message this week revealed an indecisive, ambivalent man. The only clarity in the speech was in the style of the delivery. The voice was strong, at times dramatic. The words, taken one by one, were uttered clearly. But taken together, it was difficult to work out what Mr Clinton was saying or where he wanted America to go. The two most critical policy elements for American government are the size of the role of government in society and the extent to which America engages in the world. What did we get from Mr Clinton?
He said, “”The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”
He gave a long-term commitment to balancing the Budget and then said, “”I challenge Congress to preserve the full faith and credit of the United States, to honour our obligations as we have for 220 years, to rise above partisanship and pass a straightforward extension of the debt limit.”
On foreign policy he said, “”We can’t do everything. But where our interests and our values are at stake … and where we can make a difference … America must lead.”
A decade ago, American politicians laced their speeches with tautologies. Mr Clinton prefers the oxymoron. He wants balanced deficits, isolationist engagement in foreign policy, and large small government. Usually, comedians who send up political leaders exaggerate meaningless waffle that side-steps the issue. Mr Clinton’s speech was beyond that sort of parody. It would have been better for him to have waffled meaningless platitudes than to do what he did. He jammed fairly precise statements up against other fairly precise statements which meant exactly the opposite.
In short Mr Clinton wants to be all things to all people. He stands for everything and thereby stands for nothing.
He referred to the state of the union as “”strong” and ended his speech by blessing the (ital) United (ital) States of America (his emphasis). This at a time when America’s economic performance is slipping on the world table; when militarily it cannot afford to do what it used to around the world and when political disunity on fundamentals has caused the government to shut down.
Mr Clinton’s paranoia about offending anyone has paralysed his policy efforts. The big-ticket items promised at the beginning of his presidency … notably a universal health-insurance scheme … have fallen by the wayside. His vacillation in foreign affairs, especially over Bosnia, was caused by a fear, on one hand, of being seen as weak and, on the other, of being seen as the President who caused the body bags of Vietnam to reappear on American television screens.
President Lincoln said, “”You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” The difference in modern times is that faster communications means that the time period for being able to fool any of the people is considerably shortened. If Mr Clinton wants to be re-elected, he will have to articulate what he stands for and act on it, even if that means upsetting some of the people some of the time. The time for fooling them any of the time ends in November.