Impeach This
Commentary: The GOP won't like the ending, but Clinton's comeback was scripted years ago
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On January 15, as House Republican prosecutors urged the Senate to remove the president from office, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris sat in a television studio, explaining how Clinton could beat the rap. While Congress was engrossed in the trial, Morris noted, Clinton was staging events to highlight tobacco legislation, money for extra cops, and other popular initiatives. "He's going to use the formula that we used when we were in the White House," said Morris. "Public values defeat private scandal."
Morris wasn't speculating. He was quoting from the meeting agendas he wrote for Clinton's 1996 campaign. The agendas, which Morris has just published in a new edition of his book Behind the Oval Office, carry new significance today. They explain how Clinton survived 1998 and how Republicans, in seeking to destroy him, are instead destroying their own chances in 2000.
The agendas illuminate three catastrophic political mistakes in the prosecution of Clinton. First, the GOP has defined itself as the party of sexual inquisition. In a May 4, 1995, strategy memo, Morris listed five categories of issues on which Republicans could run: economic, defense, racial, crime, and social. "When Republicans are reduced to only social message, they lose," Morris wrote. The "key to winning," he advised Clinton, was to "remove fiscal issues" and "keep attention focused on social issues."
Morris understood that the choice of battleground -- the issues on which to focus -- is more important than which side is on the attack, because the attacking party, in the course of stereotyping its opponent, reinforces its own stereotype. On this basis, Morris disagreed with liberal advisers who wanted Clinton to stand foursquare against Republican budget cuts. "We are being folded into Democratic rhetoric of rich vs. poor," Morris cautioned in an April 5, 1995, agenda. "Even if this produces short-term gains by hurting Republicans, its long-term cost in tying Clinton to Democratic orthodoxy is too big a price to pay." Likewise, Morris counseled Clinton never to attack tax cuts, welfare reform, or popular crime-fighting measures from the left.
Instead, Morris hoped Republicans would let their conservative base prod them into unwise battles over social issues. In his April 27, 1995, memo on the Oklahoma City bombing, Morris shrewdly advised Clinton to goad the GOP into a debate over restrictions on high-powered weapons, since that issue pitted anti-government gun owners, who held sway over the GOP, against the broader public. The upshot, Morris predicted, would be "self-inflicted linkage between [the] party and extremists."
This is precisely what the Republicans have achieved by trying to take Clinton down. They have identified themselves with the cultural issues on which they are least popular. Taking false comfort in their prosecutorial role, they have underscored their own stereotype as the party of intolerance. Less than one in three voters now trusts congressional Republicans to handle the nation's business, and one-fourth of the Republican electorate now views the Democratic Party as favorably as it does the GOP. If even half of these alienated voters defects in 2000, the GOP will be blown out.
The Republicans' second mistake was to associate themselves with playing politics rather than solving problems. Morris noticed this dichotomy in the course of poll-testing Clinton's scandals. He concluded that the Whitewater probe was "not cutting very much," in part because the public had turned deeply cynical about the politics of scandal. By a 2-1 margin, respondents said the investigation was "politically driven" rather than "fair."
Given this level of cynicism, Morris predicted that a Republican campaign based on Clinton's scandals would backfire disastrously. Just before the 1996 Republican National Convention, Morris poll-tested 15 scenarios that he thought might affect the race. The results, delivered in a July 18, 1996, agenda, projected that the worst scenario for the GOP was an all-out Republican attack on Clinton's character and Whitewater -- which could have propelled him to a 31-point victory.
The alternative to attack-politics, Morris argued, is to focus on solving problems. The same 1996 poll that projected a backlash against a scandal- obsessed GOP also predicted a possible Republican victory if the GOP pushed a major tax cut or if Clinton vetoed welfare reform. Morris concluded that the GOP convention -- because it failed to dent Clinton's approval rating -- "was about them, not about the people."
By focusing on solving the people's problems, Morris theorized, Clinton could inoculate himself against charges of sexual misbehavior. In his April 24, 1996, memo, Morris reported that when voters were asked to choose between two messages -- one about Clinton's "womanizing, pot smoking, [and] sex harassment suit," and another about his initiatives on "domestic violence, truth in sentencing, [and] health portability" -- nearly two out of three said the latter was more important. More strikingly, a poll two months later found that, by an even wider margin, voters preferred a president who did the "right things for people" to one with the "highest moral character." In his August 20, 1996, memo, Morris concluded: "Use public values to defeat private character attacks."
The impeachment clash has played out exactly as Morris calculated. While the GOP has focused on scandal, Clinton has focused on policy. By a margin of 2-to-1, voters approve of Clinton's job performance, view the Democratic Party favorably, and view the GOP unfavorably.
The Republicans' third mistake was to define themselves in opposition to a president who has assiduously courted public opinion. Four years ago, when Republicans enjoyed the kind of popularity Clinton enjoys today, Morris counseled Clinton not to define himself in opposition to them. "Getting involved in a zero-sum game with Congress is a very bad idea," he argued. "Congress' ratings are pretty good."
Rather than fight the GOP, Clinton set about courting the broadest possible majority. Morris' agendas express an insatiable lust to "expand vote share" toward a "national consensus" that would re-elect Clinton by a "large enough margin to breathe easily." Toward that end, he urged Clinton to embrace tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. In lurid detail, he told Clinton exactly which welfare reform provisions to support and which to oppose, based on polls. Morris' records also show that Clinton didn't raise the tobacco issue until Morris assured him, using surveys, that it would cost him few votes.
Polls also guided Clinton's pursuit of feel-good causes such as disaster aid and voluntary community service. In one memo, Morris reported that Clinton's meeting with the families of victims of the 1996 Flight 800 crash made voters more likely to vote for him over Dole. In another, Morris advised Clinton to hitch his campaign to the 1996 Olympic Games (proposed theme: "When I see Americans winning in the Olympic Stadium, I think of how we can win at global trade"). Morris even poll-tested which of various "moderate, American heroes" would boost Clinton's ratings the most if they were to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
In short, Clinton systematically identified himself with popular themes: economic growth, the work ethic, fiscal restraint, smaller government, and protecting kids. No one should be surprised, then, that three years later the campaign to impeach Clinton has provoked voters to turn on his prosecutors.
The agendas analyze this phenomenon with eerie prescience. In a May 1996 analysis of survey data, Morris noted that a plurality of voters thought the Supreme Court should postpone resolution of the Paula Jones case. "It shows how much the voters want to protect the president," he remarked. A month later, he reported that a plurality of voters thought Clinton had done something illegal involving Whitewater, but many supported his re-election anyway, believing he was a good president -- certainly better than Dole would be -- and that his misdeeds weren't "really bad."
Can the GOP recover from the impeachment crisis? Republican strategists say voters will forget about it by next year. But that's what they thought about the 1995 government shutdown, which destroyed their party's image and cost it the 1996 elections. In a memo during the shutdown, Morris gloated that the public was growing exasperated with the "pigheaded" Republicans. "The GOP did not, however, get the message," he recalls. Four years later, they still don't get it. The voters will have to repeat it.
