Right Makes Might

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Meanwhile, at the White House, the finger pointing has already started, with blame falling heaviest on the President's most liberal advisers, including Stephanopoulos, deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes and pollster Stan Greenberg. Trouble is, as an Administration centrist put it, "the liberal adviser who has got the President in the most trouble is the one he can't fire" -- Hillary Clinton. But a White House official argued that the focus on the politics of individual advisers was misguided. "Ours is not a management or a staff problem," he said. "It's a philosophical problem. It's about whether you listen to the American people or whether you listen to the special-interest groups in your own party." Several centrist officials held out hope that Tuesday's defeat will push Clinton back to the New Democrat themes that got him elected. Even Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, predicted to TIME that the defeat will be "very good" for Clinton by liberating him from "catering to the far left" of his party.

The Republicans' victory gives them advantages that could be converted to achieve their goal of winning both the White House and Congress in 1996. Their sway over congressional committees allows them not only to initiate and block legislation, but also to block Administration appointees and regulatory actions and to tie the White House down in hearings and investigations.

One of Clinton's worst nightmares came to life last Tuesday when Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican, became the next chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. D'Amato plans to reopen hearings into the Clintons' Whitewater investments as early as January. Meanwhile, Hatch will vet the President's judicial appointments as head of the Judiciary Committee. And paleoconservative Senator Jesse Helms will torment the striped-pants set as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Helms acknowledged as much in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher after the election results were in. He intended to work "in a spirit of mutual friendship and cooperation," he wrote. Helms, who already routinely blocks appointments of ambassadors he considers too liberal, added a proviso: "It would be less than candid of me to fail to acknowledge that there must necessarily be adjustments in the broad focus of the Administration's foreign policies."