When Clinton was inaugurated in 1993, President Bush promised not to criticize his successor for one year. Even after that, Bush mostly held his tongue. Having been defeated by Clinton, Bush figured criticism would look like sour grapes and wouldn’t help his sons’ political careers. Clinton, of course, offered no such promise. After retreating for a decent (or indecent) interval to set up his office on West 57th Street in New York City, Citizen Clinton will be ready to commence firing into the bushes.
Think Teddy Roosevelt, the last young, vigorous and verbose ex-president, sniping at his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft. Clinton has long fancied the TR comparison, amassing the best conservation record since Roosevelt and fashioning his Third Way after turn-of-the-century progressivism. No doubt he regrets that the 22nd Amendment precludes him from running for president again, on the Bill Moose ticket.
But for all of his political gifts, Clinton is hardly the right person to lead the Democrats out of the wilderness. Driving Democratic turnout (especially in African-American areas) in the 2002 midterm congressional elections will obviously be helpful, and the occasional Clinton jab might throw Bush off balance. The problem for Democrats is that Clinton may suck up all the oxygen that others in his party need to begin breathing on their own. (Hillary is perhaps the only one who can share the rarefied air.) Al Gore may have trouble leading the not-so-loyal opposition; while Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt are skillful legislative leaders, the Democrats already show signs of being outflanked.
Take the John Ashcroft hearings. For all of the thundering by liberal interest groups, the Democrats on the committee never even met to plan a strategy. They allowed the Republicans to make it seem as if opponents of the nomination were antireligious or carelessly charging racism. Ted Kennedy was too angry and too morally compromised to rally the cause. Russ Feingold naively said conservatives like Ashcroft should be confirmed so that a Democratic president could appoint “a Ramsey Clark” (read: ultraliberal) as attorney general, as if the GOP could be expected to play by Marquess of Queensbury rules were the roles reversed.
Would the Republicans be so sweet? All you have to do is look at what Ashcroft himself did to ambassadorial nominee James Hormel, whom Ashcroft attacked for being gay (then denied last week having done so), and to Judge Ronnie White, whom Ashcroft in 1999 shamelessly slandered. (Even the Republicans on the committee were impressed with White as a good man who wasn’t “pro-criminal.”) The only effective Democrat was Dick Durbin of Illinois, who nailed Ashcroft for character assassination.
If the Democrats were more like Republicans, it’s obvious what they would do this week: threaten to filibuster the Ashcroft nomination unless Bush promised to nominate White for the next Missouri vacancy for the federal bench. That’s highly unlikely because it would require Republican senators who already rejected White once to eat too much crow. But there are other ways for Democrats to begin to play a little more aggressively. At present, 41 Clinton nominees to the federal bench have not been acted on by the Senate. How many could be traded for Ashcroft? The filibuster approach entails applying immoderate tactics to steer Bush toward a thoroughly moderate government.
Under normal circumstances, a president is entitled to appoint almost anyone he wants, fulfilling his mandate. But these aren’t normal circumstances. The new president has no mandate–and is therefore duty-bound to avoid extremist candidates like Ashcroft. Sooner or later, someone–probably Bill Clinton–will have to mention the elephant in the living room: the November election. The disputed results may not restrict Bush’s legitimacy but they should certainly restrict his leeway, all the GOP efforts to forget November notwithstanding. Ashcroft once said the only thing that belongs in the middle of the road is “a dead skunk.” Actually there’s something else out by the median strip–the American people. The unmistakable message of the election was: stay moderate. Bush, owing a debt to the right wing, apparently missed the message. The Democrats, scared of their own shadows, don’t quite yet have the courage of their own moderate convictions. They won’t get in gear until they do.
