Clinton Outlines His Rehabilitation

WASHINGTON -- It may have been a day of watching film clips of Democratic Leadership Council President Dave McCurdy referring to him as a "transitional figure,'' or a month of listening to Democrats offering him advice, or even the meetings since the election where aides argued over what to do. Whatever the impetus, President Bill Clinton tore up the speech prepared for him, spent an hour in the Oval Office writing a new one and emerged with what aides call a philosophical blueprint for his rehabilitation.


Clinton's address to the DLC on Wednesday sounded the themes of his 1992 campaign and brought the president from gays-in-the-military and a government-heavy reform of health care back to a package of issues he promoted as candidate and president. He talked about national service and education improvements, reforming welfare and making government more efficient, all ideas popularized by the centrist DLC.


It was what one aide called a "starting over again, fighting for the middle-class speech'' that the president told his audience would be fleshed out in the next few weeks with "new ideas.'' Even Clinton acknowledged that talk is cheap: "Principles are fine, but sooner or later, you've got to do something, too.''


The DLC address was the latest and most unmistakable sign that Clinton's read of the November elections is that voters are calling him back toward the center of the political spectrum from which he ran, and telling him, he said, that his presidency had made "a slip not a fall.''


White House officials indignantly deny that the new Clinton is any other than the real Clinton or that the election has driven the president to adopt new principles.


Republicans do not doubt policies are shifting toward them. Noting the president's increased defense spending and adherence to the theme of smaller government, Jack Kemp, a potential Republican presidential challenger, said this week the GOP was having great success even before it took over Congress. "We're dragging the Clinton administration to the center-right, where most of the people of this country are.''


Since the election to Congress, Clinton has announced a $25 billion increase in Pentagon spending in the face of sharp GOP criticism that the military is underfunded; prohibited funding of fertility research on embryos created for research purposes; approved the Agriculture Department's decision to shrink the department by closing more than 1,000 field offices and indicated his 1996 budget will propose a middle-class tax cut.


White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said in an interview Wednesday that Clinton "has been through an awful lot of meetings and thinking'' since the election and ended up, not surprisingly, where he started his presidency -- with pledges to make a smaller, more-efficient government work for most Americans, to offer equal opportunity but not guarantee equal results for Americans, to not allow the country to turn away from the international community.


Another sign is the way the Clinton administration is structuring its budget plans around four goals: streamlining government; consolidating agencies and departments of government; eliminating functions, personnel and areas of government; and privatizing some functions now performed by government.


Panetta said he told the senior staff Wednesday to read Clinton's speech as a philosophical roadmap and guidance for the policy battles that are in full debate at the White House this month.


Most of the debates are not yet decided, including the size of a tax cut, the amount of deficit reduction beyond that already required and the emphasis on what Clinton calls "investment,'' that is, increased spending. Aides said Clinton also wants to shift spending in some areas, with immigration enforcement listed as a top priority. It was an issue that played little role in 1992 but emerged in 1994, particularly in California. Officials said Clinton is considering a major infusion of money into policing activities that would slow illegal immigration as a way of countering efforts to deny benefits and federal help to illegal immigrants.


The Clinton administration has already nodded twice to immigration anxiety since the election, announcing last week that it would end a temporary amnesty program for about 200,000 Salvadorans in the United States and limiting to those suffering "extraordinary hardship'' the Cubans who will be allowed to enter the United States from refugee camps in Panama and the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.


Clinton, in his address, claimed he has already succeeded at ideas Republicans are now promoting, such as deficit reduction, welfare reform, returning power to the states, and a tough crime bill. He invited the GOP into what he called a contest of ideas and proposals.


"The Republicans want to do more: C'mon, let's do it. Let's have a partnership. Let's have a contest. Let's have at it. We're not through reducing government, but don't deny the fact that we have started it, we led the way,'' he said.