That’s the story of Bill Clinton’s first year in office, and it may be played out again this week when the House of Representatives votes on the North American Free Trade Agreement. That is, if the White House is lucky. Last summer Clinton was able to pull out his budget by twisting arms as the clock ticked down on the House floor. But with a only few days to go last week, NAFTA was still in doubt. With the presidency on the line and Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, the trade treaty should be a shoo-in–especially after the skillful taunting by Vice President Al Gore in last week’s debate on the “Larry King” show exposed NAFTA’s chief tormentor. Ross Perot, to be a whiny crank (page 28). Yet many congressmen regard the president more as a shop owner to be shaken down than as a force to be reckoned with. Pressured by populist rhetoric, a majority of lawmakers could still sell out to higher bidders, like labor unions.
Win or lose, Clinton’s top aides are beginning to wonder if this is any way to run a presidency. They are tired of lurching from crisis to crisis, and they know that Clinton will not accomplish his most ambitious goal–health-care reform–if he does not settle down. Many of Clinton’s advisers are just plain worn out. They have learned to live with outbursts of temper from their chronically sleep-deprived boss. One aide on the receiving end of a late-night call had to sit through a 20-minute tirade from the president before he could get in a word of response. But they want to change what they call the Meetings “R” Us culture of the White House, where too many staffers meet for too long to decide too little.
Clinton’s brinksmanship is not all his fault. Elected with only 43 percent of the vote, he must cobble together shifting coalitions, mindful that today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s ally. Even so, for a president with such a shaky mandate, he has grand designs and no hesitation about expressing them. In a press conference this week, Clinton complained that one of his greatest frustrations as president is his inability to “cut through the din of daily events” at the White House. Much of that din is of his own making. During the 1992 campaign, Clinton was seen as a great talker, but as president he has been less effective as a communicator. Ronald Reagan’s approach was essentially “less is more”: he rarely held press conferences, and reiterated the same few themes. Clinton’s approach has turned out to be “more is less.” Clinton complained on “Meet the Press” two weeks ago that the passage of national service, a signature idea of his presidency, was barely noticed by the media. “It’s his own fault,” grumbles an adviser, recalling that when Clinton should have been publicly savoring the victory he was instead trumpeting a joint fuel-efficiency project with the automakers. “The voters cannot figure out what’s important.”
Some presidents use a powerful chief of staff to impose order and force decisions. Clinton’s chief of staff, Mack McLarty, is regarded as a decent and fair man who would make a good secretary of commerce. As many as 10 different advisers have direct access to the president, not to mention outside consultants like James Carville and Mandy Grunwald, who wander around the West Wing as unofficial advisers. No one has “closure capability,” says an aide. Clinton prefers it that way; he is his own chief of staff, and wants to decide everything.
Last summer, three weeks before Congress was scheduled to vote on the budget, McLarty held a rally for 200 White House aides. He told them to drop everything and work on the budget crisis. That became the model for tough times: “When in doubt have a meeting and bring in more bodies,’ says an aide. The strategy can work, as it did with the budget, but it leaves the staff feeling like pinballs, ricocheting from the jobs package to health care to Somalia and back to deficit reduction. They have no time for long-term planning. For really big undertakings like health care, the old campaign war room is re-created. Amid the computers and leftover pizza boxes, busy aides rush about, trying to follow the maxims of modern political combat, like always answering charges within the same news cycle. No barb by Bob Dole goes unanswered, so no evening news show passes without controversy.
The way the White House handled NAFTA illustrates Clinton’s cliffhanger style of leadership. It was difficult, until almost too late, to tell if Clinton really cared about the trade pact. His aides say that in his heart he was always a believer. With his Rhodes-scholar background, Clinton is a true internationalist, as disdainful of protectionism and isolationism as any elitist editorial writer. But he is also a professional politician who during the 1992 campaign could not afford to offend his Democratic base, the blue-collar workers who feel threatened by jobs lost to foreign competition. After he was elected, Clinton waited to push NAFTA until he had negotiated side agreements with Mexico to protect labor and the environment. “Our public position has been that the side agreements slowed us down,” says a White House aide. “That’s bull. We couldn’t start any sooner because everybody who should have been doing NAFTA was doing the budget.”
In August, White House aides realized that they faced a potential train wreck: trying to launch Reinventing Government, health reform and NAFTA all at the same time. The president’s political advisers, like George Stephanopoulos and Carville, wanted to do health care. The economic team, including budget director Leon Panetta and Treasury secretary Lloyd Bentsen, wanted to do NAFTA. Clinton, typically, wanted to do it all.
Needing to convert scores of congressmen, Clinton opened up the bazaar. Some lawmakers went for as little as a 15-minute photo op, but others were more expensive. To get a single Hispanic congressmen, Esteban Torres, the White House had to promise $225 million to start up a North American development bank. A steady stream of solons trooped up to the White House with their hands out: there were deals for congressmen who represented interests ranging from broom makers to citrus growers. Clinton was an affable host as well as a generous one. At one meeting, New York Republican Peter King mentioned that tabloid paramour Joey Buttafuoco lived in his district. “Maybe we can get Buttafuoco to come out for NAFTA,” mused Clinton, adding, “Nah, I bet he has a problem with the child-labor provisions.” By the end of last week, the bidding began to reach ridiculous heights. Knowing that Clinton needed at least half his votes from across the aisle, Republicans demanded a pledge that in 1994, the Democratic party would not campaign against any GOPer who voted for NAFTA. This last concession was too much, although the president did promise to reprimand consultants and Democratic candidates who try to use a pro-NAFTA vote against Republicans.
Lawmakers who come around are sometimes churlish about it. Democrat Dan Glickman of Kansas declared himself for NAFTA last week, but scoffed, “The White House has been uneven, unclear and, up until recently, inarticulate in describing the benefits of this treaty.” White House insiders don’t really disagree. To impose some order on the White House, McLarty has imposed a 45-minute “management meeting” every morning for top aides to dole out assignments. And Ricki Seidman, a veteran of the campaign war room, has been given the job of making sure the president’s schedule is in tune with the White House message of the day.
But until Clinton becomes more selfdisciplined, these minor changes won’t mean much. David Gergen, the president’s chief image maker, says that his boss should not be the “commentator in chief.” Worried that Clinton is overexposed, he is trying to persuade Clinton to talk a little less expansively. Though it goes against his nature, the president may be listening. After Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin refused to answer a question at a press conference last Friday, Clinton quipped, “I used to give that response. I should return to it more often, I think.”
White House aides talk, almost wistfully, of trying to take on a little less in the coming months, while taking more credit for what they managed to accomplish in the first year. “There is a consensus that we have tried to do too much,” says a senior aide, who talks repeatedly about the need to “slow down” and “focus.” But already, their irrepressible boss is talking about welfare reform and new initiatives on crime–not to mention winning health reform. Clinton may yet learn to pace himself. But don’t hold your breath.
