A Time for Courage

• Share

(2 of 3)

Though hardly saintly in this regard, George Bush was not off base in charging that Clinton's tendency to waffle on tough issues was worrisome. The Democratic candidate talked only vaguely about "challenges," while avoiding any mention of sacrifice, and his economic program was a no-pain pastiche that involved taxing only the rich and foreign corporations. The resulting doubts about his trustworthiness produced enough near death experiences for his campaign to serve as warning that being all things to all people will not work.

There is also ample evidence that Americans are ready, even eager, to hear some of the hard truths that inform a yearning for change. It was a year, to borrow a phrase E.B. White used to describe a contentious New England town meeting, "when democracy sat up and looked around." Part of Ross Perot's appeal was his rapid-fire, flip-chart manner of laying out the bad news that Bush and Clinton did not want to discuss.

Before he launched his famous first 100 days, Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed that "the country demands bold, persistent experimentation." He understood that the best way to protect the mandate he had won was to expend his political capital, to treat his popularity as a tool for governing rather than as an asset to be hoarded until the next election. He was re-elected three ; times. George Bush is living proof that the opposite approach leads to failure.

Clinton has pledged, in the spirit of Roosevelt, to spend his first 100 days reigniting the nation's economic confidence. Instead of accepting a muddle- through series of compromises that offends few factions, he must be a leader, working with the new Democratic Congress to produce the kind of jolt that will cause Americans in their corner coffee shops to talk once again about the future with hope, not fear. The rare combination of an administration and both houses of Congress controlled by the same party means that the President can be held accountable for a change. But it also means that Clinton must prevent his seductive rhetoric about "infrastructure investments" from being translated by Congress into pork-barrel programs.

Clinton's willingness to move beyond some of the old-time Democratic religion is auspicious. He has spoken eloquently of the need to redefine liberalism: the language of entitlements and rights and special-interest demands, he says, must give way to talk of responsibilities and duties. "We're going to empower people to take control of their own lives, then hold them accountable for doing so," he says.

COMBINING CONSERVATIVE VALUES SUCH AS RESPONsibility and self-help with liberal ones like tolerance and generosity -- which is precisely the covenant that Clinton proposes -- could conquer the corrosive tactic of making wedge issues out of racial fears and sexual prejudices. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, Clinton decried the us-vs.-them politics of division. "This is America," he said. "There is no 'them'; there is only us." He then maneuvered to ensure that, unlike in 1988, in fact unlike in any election since 1960, race was not an issue. Partly he achieved this by shying away from being cast as the tribune for the poor and blacks. Now he faces the more exalted challenge of acting affirmatively to heal the racial and cultural tensions that have frayed America's social quilt.