Is Bill Clinton For Real?

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Clinton also has made several reforms carrying out his "responsibility" theme: parents who do not attend parent-teacher meetings are fined $50 for each one missed, and students who drop out of school can have their drivers' license suspended (1,000 have been since 1989). Furthermore, the Governor has implemented a welfare-reform plan, requiring able-bodied recipients to undergo training or schooling, and imposing penalties if they do not. So far, the results are inconclusive, but critics say the plan has been sabotaged by the state's sluggish welfare bureaucracy.

If true, that would point up what many critics, and some friends, consider Clinton's greatest executive weakness: he is a poor manager who conceives good programs but does not see that they are carried out. A lawsuit filed against the state and Clinton personally last July charges that the Arkansas child- welfare system is riddled with abuse and neglect; children placed in foster care have been mistreated, and some have even died. The problems have been festering for at least a decade, but Clinton paid scant attention. Last summer he appointed a task force (quintessential Clinton: his first response to almost any hot problem is to appoint a task force or study commission), and since then he has been working to repair the system. He hopes to reach a settlement before the suit comes to trial, now scheduled for March, and plans to call a special session of the legislature to enact reforms.

Liberals contend that Clinton inherited a regressive tax structure (it presses harder on the poor than on the well-off) and made it more regressive by raising sales taxes while largely leaving alone income and business levies. Clinton replies, correctly, that the state constitution requires a nearly unobtainable 75% vote of the legislature to raise any tax other than the sales levy and, more dubiously, that he sought to change that and failed (critics say he did not make anywhere near the effort required). Characteristically, though, he adds, "What I've tried to do is to promote tax reform but also to give people what they wanted." Arkansas polls have consistently shown property taxes to be most unpopular, income taxes second, sales taxes the least hated.

Overall, Arkansas remains a dirt-poor state, but during Clinton's tenure it has been rising, relative to the other 49, slowly but measurably in some rankings of well-being. In a 1991 poll, the nation's Governors were asked which collegue they would rate the most effective; Clinton got more votes (39%) than anyone else. That, however, is not necessarily an omen of national success. Two years before the last presidential election, the same accolade went to Dukakis.

THE CANDIDATE. Press puffery apart, Clinton has got off to an impressive start. He has improved immensely as an orator; his latest efforts have been smooth, colloquial and graced with a touch of self-deprecating humor. He has raised more money (close to $4 million) than any of his rivals, and on grounds of electability has won the sympathetic interest, if not outright backing, of teacher groups and labor unions that might ordinarily prefer a more liberal candidate.