The Political Interest Frying Them Isn't the Answer

Never get tarred as soft on crime. Bill Clinton learned that lesson late, but he learned it well. After regaining Arkansas' governorship in 1982, which he had lost in 1980 to a law-and-order rival, Clinton set 70 execution dates for 26 prisoners over 10 years; three were actually put to death. To reaffirm his mettle as he ran for the White House, Clinton rushed home from New Hampshire to deny a condemned murderer's clemency plea. The brain-damaged killer barely knew his own identity, let alone the fate that awaited him (at his last meal, he saved the pecan pie to eat later), but Clinton proceeded without apparent qualms. "I can be nicked on a lot," he said afterward, "but no one can say I'm soft on crime."

What worked for the candidate is doing even better for the President. The muscular, get-tough themes that have become a staple of Clinton's rhetoric have won the public's blessing. Last week, for the first time, the majority of people surveyed in two national polls said Democrats are better able than Republicans to "handle crime problems."

Time, then, to deliver. A crime bill is struggling through Congress. While Clinton avoided involvement during its drafting, he is now complaining about the delay in its passage. Far worse, he is supporting its most emotionally appealing proposals instead of seeking to shore up the single measure that has been proved to work: more cops on the beat. Last week, for example, Vice President Al Gore offered the Administration's version of a "three strikes and you're out" scheme that modifies the crime bill's harsh life-imprisonment language only slightly by narrowing the list of applicable felonies. Any three-strikes proposal, however, will affect only several hundred federal inmates each year. "We hope the states follow suit," says a Clinton aide, an inefficient course that could bankrupt those that do. In California, a three- strikes provision would double the incarcerated population, require 20 new prisons and swell the current $2.8 billion corrections-department budget by about $2 billion. "We can't afford it," says John Vasconcellos, chairman of the state assembly's Ways and Means committee. "There would be no California left, except for the police and prison state."