EVERYBODY DOES IT

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In every presidential election from 1968 through 1988, the Democrats nominated a goody-goody (Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis). And they lost every election during those two decades except in 1976, when the Republicans also nominated a goody-goody (Gerald Ford). In 1992 the Democrats finally got--well, you might say cynical or you might say serious. They decided they wanted to win this time. So they nominated a man who is no one's idea of a goody-goody. They nominated a slippery politician. Not coincidentally, he is also a morally flawed character with personal and (perhaps) financial peccadilloes.

Bill Clinton had not been President more than five minutes before many Democrats began reacting in horror to the realization that their man was not a plaster saint. Many Republicans, meanwhile, seemed resentful that the Democrats had stolen the election through the devious device of nominating someone who knew how to win.

It is pretty clear now that even if Clinton is re-elected, he is destined never to enjoy a period, as even Richard Nixon did, of genuine and heartfelt popularity while in office. The best he can probably hope for is a couple of weeks of golden-glow nostalgia when he leaves office in 2001 and a historical re-evaluation some decades down the road. It is fortunate for Clinton that our voting system doesn't measure intensity of feelings, because his opponents dislike him with a seething passion while his supporters can rarely muster more than grudging acquiescence.

But why is that? Is Clinton's opportunistic floppery on, say, balancing the budget any more egregious than Bob Dole's on, say, abortion? Ronald Reagan's California business chums bought him a house while he was President, to barely a peep of protest; yet we are in our fourth year of pawing through the much smaller financial favors Clinton's Arkansas business chums tried to do him 14 years ago when he was Governor.

Yes, of course, repeat after your mother: " 'Everybody does it' is no excuse." But why is Clinton's "character" such a liability to him, when by any reasonable reckoning his professional and personal failings average out to a level of moral compromise so typical among Presidents and presidential candidates that it almost amounts to a job qualification?

Part of the answer lies in Republican strategy. With not much cooking on the foreign front, and with the economic issues that usually decide elections divisible into those that look pretty good right now (growth, unemployment, inflation, the deficit) and those for which the Republicans have nothing much to suggest (wage stagnation, middle-class angst), "character" is naturally a tempting theme. Part of the answer lies with the media. Skeptical scrutiny of Presidents, it seems, is on a permanent upward ratchet. This is a good thing, by and large, but rough on the incumbent. And part of the answer lies with Clinton himself. Not that his moral failings are worse than other politicians'. But his relative youth (which is not his fault) and his occasional callowness (which is) deprive him of gravitas.