The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

The calls were made at around 5 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 6. "Bad news," one of Mario Cuomo's aides told George Friedman, the Democratic leader of the Bronx. "The Governor's out of it." Cracked Friedman: "Everybody knows that. Now tell me about his plans." Assured that the message was not about Cuomo's mental state and that the Governor really was pulling the plug on an incipient favorite-son presidential candidacy, Friedman and his Democratic machine colleagues across New York State were finally liberated to chart their own course. Five hours later a number of them, including Friedman, had thrown their support to Bill Clinton. By week's end even Representative Tom Manton, the Democratic leader of Cuomo's home county, Queens, was on board with the Arkansas Governor.

The man who brokered the endorsements was Harold Ickes Jr., a longtime liberal activist who has supported every far-left Democratic presidential candidate from Eugene McCarthy to Jesse Jackson. "When you consider Harold's politics and then the fact that Manton supported Bush on the gag rule on abortion, you have to concede that a coalition is being built," says Sarah Kovner, another New York liberal activist in Clinton's corner.

But why exactly is Clinton catching on across the Democrats' ideological spectrum? Why are the likes of Ickes and Manton and an increasing number of Democratic fat cats and trade-union leaders flocking to a centrist Southern Governor so soon after most of them swore they'd be long dead before either they or the country would again support another Deep South Democrat?

In part, Clinton's prominence is due to the flatness of the field around him. Massachusetts' Paul Tsongas will probably be considered a regional candidate even if he wins the Feb. 18 primary in next-door New Hampshire. Jerry Brown is still orbiting a distant planet. Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has been tarnished by conflict-of-interest reports, his failure to flesh out a specific message beyond a comprehensive national health-care plan, and an emerging perception that he is little more than a biography in a suit. And then there is Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, whose embodiment of Rooseveltian notions of government intervention should command liberal loyalties. Instead Harkin is watching helplessly as crucial elements of what should be his core constituency, the country's leading white-collar union leaders, conclude that he is too strident and too liberal to appeal broadly in a general election. "Harkin sounds wonderful," says Lenore Miller, the head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who has signed on with Clinton. "But it's all too parochial."

It is the judgment about Harkin that best explains the rush to Clinton. It is as though the liberals who have dominated the Democrats' nominating process for 20 years have all grown up at once. "We've indulged our hearts long enough," says Ickes. "We've lost the White House and consoled ourselves with Democratic Congresses. But it's clear that when you control Congress you control nothing. We want to win, so we overlook things like Bill's support of the death penalty and the gulf war. It's that simple."

Clinton is also helped by his becoming the latest darling of the press, which is eager to impose some order on the race. Many of the influential political writers who have urged the Democrats to nominate a more conservative candidate see Clinton as the fulfillment of their own prescription for victory. "But it's not just hype," says Joe McDermott, who leads New York State's civil service workers. "Clinton has actually held a job where he's seen things tried and fail in the real world. He can go to the country with something more than words, which can make Bush's attack harder to sustain."

Even the teachers' unions, with which Clinton has crossed swords, are signing on. "He's truly improved the schools," says Sandra Feldman of the United Federation of Teachers, who points to Arkansas' being the first state to require eighth-graders to pass a standardized exam before going on to high school -- a Clinton reform that helps explain why Arkansas now has the best high school graduation rate in the South. "Not a bad record to throw against the 'education President,' " says Feldman.

Among voters at large, Clinton's insistence that responsibilities accompany rights is resonating as a Democratic answer to the family-values themes that George Bush and Ronald Reagan have used to capture crucial middle-class Democrats. One particular expression of Clinton's approach, Arkansas' denial of a driver's license to school dropouts, wins applause before every audience he addresses, including two recent gatherings of wealthy Republicans.

By unashamedly wooing Republicans and independents even before the first Democratic primary, Clinton is bettering his chances for ultimate success. For decades now, Democrats have had to run left to win their party's nomination and then right to contest the general election, an ideological zigzag that has alienated many voters. What Clinton seems to understand is that U.S. presidential politics is not two one-act plays but a single play with two acts. "Yeah," says Rich Bond, one of the President's top campaign advisers. "It looks like this guy may actually get it."