The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

A prince, wrote Machiavelli, must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Therefore, a prudent ruler ought not to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interest, and when the reasons that made him bind himself no longer exist . . .

THESE WORDS ARE FROM THE EPIGRAPH OF ROOSEVELT: THE LION AND THE FOX, a book that Bill Clinton has spoken of fondly as his appreciation of F.D.R.'s style of governance has grown. The President has already proved adept at following the dark side of Machiavelli's injunction: during the campaign, he ignored the & exploding deficit because acknowledging its growth would have meant breaking his promise of tax relief for the middle class. It is tempting to mock him now that he has broken that pledge, but Clinton has at least faced the facts squarely, which is more than his immediate predecessors ever did, and he is forthrightly taking the heat for the tax increases that serious debt reduction demands. Simply to move the debate from whether the deficit should be tackled to how the red ink should be stemmed is the definition of courage in modern American politics. So give him that, and praise him as well for keeping faith with his basic philosophy, his insistence that current consumption be sacrificed for future investment if the nation is to prosper in the global marketplace. Clinton's economic plan deserves to be known as a new New Deal, and Congress should pass it quickly. But getting from here to there will require that the President be both lion and fox -- and probably a whole lot of other cunning animals as well -- and his task is harder because he faces significant obstacles from inside his own Administration and from his fellow Democrats in Congress.

At a time when honesty is required, any perceived disingenuousness can be fatal -- yet there has been too much of that already. Labeling Social Security tax increases as spending cuts invites ridicule, and mixing up gross and net deficit-reduction figures is similarly foolish. Correcting such lapses by demanding that the unvarnished truth be told should not be difficult, but getting the congressional Democrats in line is another matter. And since Clinton has apparently abandoned any hope of G.O.P. support for his plan, even a moderate number of Democratic defections could doom the enterprise.

Beyond long-standing ideological divisions, there are two kinds of Democrats: those new to service and the mandarins who will be around when Clinton's attention turns to laying the cornerstone for his presidential library. "((House Speaker)) Tom Foley has put the wood to the newcomers, so I think we're all right with them," says a top Administration official. This is a reference to a meeting with House freshmen last week, when Foley saw early retirement in the new members' futures if the gridlock persists when they face re-election in 1994. "It's a lot trickier with the big guys," says this aide, "and the early signs are troubling." Consider just a bit of the dust already kicked up by some Senate potentates, as described by this official: Paul Sarbanes has "privately signaled that he'll oppose the plan if the freeze on pay for federal workers survives"; Ernest Hollings "has hinted he won't go along unless we cut the deficit even more"; Sam Nunn "hasn't committed to the defense cuts, and without him, forget about it"; Robert Byrd "is dubious, to put it mildly, about any spending cuts at all, which means each of them is going to be a major battle. We've got to get some parliamentary rules that keep the cuts from being considered separately, but Byrd's going to make that a bitch."

Meanwhile, the Administration faces another dilemma: when and in what guise to present the President's health-care-reform plan. "Any way you look at it," says a White House aide, "when health care hits the table, people will see more tax increases on top of those already proposed. We should delay health reform until the economic package passes, but ((Senate majority leader)) George Mitchell wants both plans considered in combination, and the President sees himself as on a mission from God with respect to health care. Neither has clearly thought through the politics."

The problem here is that delay is prudent, but so is Clinton's desire to move swiftly on all fronts. The President routinely quotes F.D.R.'s 1932 observation that "the country needs bold, persistent experimentation," but he rarely completes Roosevelt's thought: "Take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it and try another." But time is not Clinton's best friend. In an era when the citizenry's collective attention span can be measured in nanoseconds (and without a full-scale depression to guarantee patience), the President has confected his best chance to change course. If he fails, it may be his successor who gets to try something else.