YOU CAN'T KEEP A BAD MAN DOWN

Bill Clinton is a tainted president. But Bruce Anderson at the Democratic convention finds that the luckiest president in histoty has proved a great one wrong

Chicago BILL CLINTON has enjoyed a lot of luck. In 1991, after the Gulf war, President Bush looked unbeatable. A number of senior Democrats decided to sit out the 1992 elec- tion; Governor Clinton filled the vacuum. George Bush had evidently accepted the Democrats' assessment. Convinced of his invulnerability, he campaigned like a sleep- walker against an opponent who may be a moral nullity but who does know how to Campaign. Even so, Mr Bush would have won but for the intervention of Ross Perot, Who drew a majority of his votes from the Republicans. As a result, Mr Clin- ton became President with just 43 per cent of the vote, 3 per cent less than Michael Dukakis's 1988 total.

Few people outside Mr Clinton's OW n entourage had high expecta- tions of his presidency, and in his first few months, he lived down to the majority's assessment. Just before the inauguration, I asked Robin Renwick — then ambassador in Washington — whether Tory Central Office's intervention in the Campaign had caused lasting annoy- ance. No, came the reply, it was resented by the younger Clinton

staffers; the kids who had gone to Little Rock with their sleeping-

bags. But they would not be seeing Much of the President for the next four years. The grown-ups would take over, and they had a sense of perspec- tive.

Sir Robin was mistaken. The kids moved their sleeping-bags from Little Rock to the White House. For the first couple of years, It seemed as if there were no grown-ups in the Clinton administration. The American spoils system, which means that thousands of senior officials lose their jobs whenever there is a change of regime in Washington, almost guarantees a degree of chaos in the first few months of a new presidency. But Mr Clinton set new standards for amateur- ishness. He seemed to have little idea of What to do, less still how to do it. As Bill Crowe, Mr Clinton's appointee as ambas- sador to London, put it: This administra- tion's right hand does not know what its right hand is doing.'

Mr Clinton's poll ratings reached record lows. He was also beset by allegations of financial and sexual impropriety and of misuse of power. The Arkansas State House had always been an ethics-free zone; Mr Clinton, the First Lady, and a number of his officials seemed to think that Arkansas rules applied in Washington. Within a year of taking office, Mr Clinton looked certain to be a one-term president, on a par with the forgotten mediocrities who infested the White House between Polk and Lincoln. A man without moral depth, his campaign skills had won him an office infinitely beyond his capacities. By comparison, Jimmy Carter appeared states- manlike, Warren Harding seemed scrupu- lous and Richard Nixon trustworthy.

Then luck came to his rescue, on several fronts. First, there was foreign policy. In both Haiti and Bosnia, he made the ideal military interventions for post-Vietnam America. They looked good on CNN and there were no American fatalities. Then America came out of recession, just too late to save Mr Bush. New jobs were creat- ed and tax revenues boomed. At the Feder- al Reserve Bank, meanwhile, Alan Greenspan, a Republican who has been one of the most successful of all post-war central bankers, kept inflation under con- trol. Mr Clinton had the sense not to inter- fere in monetary policy, though he did make fiscal errors. His 1993 tax-raising measures slowed the pace of recovery, and would have been seriously damaging if Congress had not deleted some of the more foolish proposals. The President does not deserve any credit for the recovery, but this has not stopped him from trying to take it, and a lot of Americans believe him.

This is largely due to the efforts of Mr Clinton's most effective political ally, the Speaker of the House, Newt Gin- grich. I first met Mr Gingrich in 1980, when he was beginning his second term in Congress. At that stage, his aides were keen to explain to me how America could survive a nuclear war — without the help of Star Wars. I formed the impression that this was an interesting politician who was open to ideas, but had no ability to tell a good idea from a daft one. He had been an academic; perhaps he should have stayed in his university. I concluded that he had little future in elected poli- tics. I was wrong.

First, his ideological dynamism won him the leadership of the House Republicans, who foolishly decided that this was the quality they needed. Then he was the beneficiary of the Clinton first term. It was always like- ly that the Republicans would win the Sen- ate in 1994. When Americans get angry with the governing, party, they turn out its senators. According to the conventional wisdom, however, the House was another matter. Americans would not vote for any- one whom they had never heard of. Sena- torial candidates can build up name recognition; it is much harder in House races. The incumbent can roll logs and raid the pork barrel while enjoying free mailing to boast to his constituents about it; oppo- nents are at a grave disadvantage. By the 1980s, it seemed that short of going to gaol or being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, it was almost impossible for a con- gressman to lose his seat.

No conventional wisdom is proof against Bill Clinton. He made the Democrats so unpopular that a lot of his congressmen retired rather than face the humiliation of defeat; other were turned out. At the time, this seemed to epitomise his incompetence and failure. In retrospect, it gave him his one chance of re-election.

Bill had helped Newt to the Speakership; Newt returned the favour. There is nothing sinister in Mr Gingrich's Contract With America. Ronald Reagan would have had no difficulty in selling it to American vot- ers, nor would Bill Clinton. But Newt Gin- grich could not sell cold beer in a heat wave. Wallowing in the arrogance of victo- ry, he chuntered on about the forces of his- tory, only to discover, like all politicians who try to conscript her, that history is not a good soldier. While projecting himself to the American people as simultaneously silly and menacing, he abandoned the cen- tre ground, thus allowing Mr Clinton to re- invent himself and occupy it.

In this process, Newt Gingrich gave Bill Clinton additional help. The speaker not only alarmed the American people; he ter- rified the Democrats, who thought that he might be right about history. Nineteen ninety-four reduced the Democratic Party to a cowed rabble, ready to allow Mr Clin- ton to violate any Democratic principle he cared to, as long as it would win votes. He has taken full advantage.

He even hired a Republican as his politi- cal consultant. Dick Morris has defined his strategy as 'triangulation ... we need a dynamic centre that is not in the middle of what is left and right, but is way beyond it'. Stripped of the jargon, that has a simple meaning. If the Republicans come up with a popular policy, steal it; if the Democrats in Congress propose an unpopular policy, suppress it. Though there are tensions between him and the rest of the President's staff, Mr Morris devised the Clinton plan for 1996. The modern Democratic Party's problems with presidential electability began at the Chicago convention of 1968, but many commentators have misinterpret- ed that event. It was not what happened in Chicago that did the damage. Hubert Humphrey repudiated the protesters while Mayor Daley encouraged his police force to club them. Both actions played well in Middle America, and Mr Humphrey only lost narrowly to Mr Nixon; a considerable achievement in 1968. It was subsequent developments which helped lead the Democrats into the wilderness. In a fit of bad conscience over broken student heads, the Party rewrote its rule book, took power away from the Daleys, made it harder for the Humphreys to be nominated, and land- ed itself with the taint of McGovernite lib- eralism.

Most of the delegates here in Chicago are the intellectual descendants of the demonstrators of 1968. They do not like the way Mr Clinton has moved to the cen- tre, but they know he has to do it to win re- election — and to prevent further House/Senate losses. So the gritted teeth are concealed by fixed smiles. As President Clinton grins and waves on his train jour- ney through key marginal states, the dele- gates in the hall are grinning and waving back. To an even greater extent than San Diego, the entire convention has been stage-managed and depoliticised.

It might work. It will certainly give Mr Clinton a bounce in the polls, on top of the 10-12 point lead he already has, a strong position with less than ten weeks to go before the election. Between now and pol- ling day, the President will ruthlessly exploit the power of his office to boost his campaign; as ever, he will be a formidable campaigner. Back in 1993, the conservative theologian Michael Novak predicted that the Clinton presidency would quickly disin- tegrate, because the President himself was

insufficiently grounded in reality. He was right as to the lack of reality, but wrong in believing that it would necessarily be fatal. It gives Mr Clinton the option of protean adaptability to changing circumstances, buttressed by his relentless hypocrisy.

A few months ago, the Clintons' close friend Ron Brown was killed in an air crash. Bill Clinton attended a memorial service, but as he left it he was laughing and joking — until he realised that he was on earners. He then instantly lowered his face and changed his expression. The smile vanished; the President rubbed his hand across his eye, as if to brush away a tear. The President recently claimed that: 'Everything I have done in the nearly four years ... in the White House has been about applying ... three values — oppor- tunity, responsibility, community — to meet the challenges we face.' In truth, he and Mr Morris apply two entirely different values: how will this come across on televi- sion and what effect will it have on the polls? The answers can lead Mr Clinton to change direction as swiftly as the change from smiles to tears.

Bill Clinton also has an extraordinary capacity to survive damaging disclosures. Even biographies by political allies reveal enough wrongdoing to sink ten normal presidents. Mr Clinton may eventually be indicted, and Mrs Clinton is almost certain- ly guilty of perjury. But most of the Ameri- can people do not seem to mind. They think he has done a competent job on the economy, and they are happy with the way he has kept America out of wars. They are not particularly impressed with Mr Dole and they are afraid of Mr Gingrich. So they may well re-elect Bill Clinton, with all his faults.

Mr Clinton may be a worthless man and a bad president, but he could well prove a great man wrong. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time,' said Abraham Lincoln. President Clinton does not agree.