Clinton and Congress: A Bad Marriage

In retrospect, you could say they married too hastily, heedless of how different they really were: one charming and vain; the other fusty and proud. And both of them so needy. Then came the bickering, the betrayal, the recriminations--and the long, frosty silences. Now the question is: Should Bill Clinton and the Democrats in Congress stay together for the sake of the family, or would the party be better off if they went their separate ways?

Clinton's survival hangs on the answer, as House and Senate Democrats ponder how much they are willing to risk to defend a President who has again and again abandoned them when the tables were turned. Consider how their fortunes have differed in the six years since Clinton rode into the capital as a new kind of Democrat: the President triumphed in his deals with Republicans to balance the budget, reform welfare and open trade. Cutting his party loose, he launched his own job-approval ratings to gravity-defying heights. Meanwhile, Democrats lost not only their New Deal traditions but also 52 seats in the House and a dozen in the Senate, rendering them all but irrelevant in the institution over which they once held a lock. And while it is unfair to blame Clinton for all those losses, congressional Democrats legitimately fear that the fallout from his sexual self-indulgence could deal them further damage in this election because it will be felt most in the suburban, centrist districts where their members are most threatened.

There were signs of trouble even before Clinton came to Washington. In his 1992 campaign, he blasted the then Democratic House's "midnight pay raise," and even ran ads about it in New Hampshire. He railed against the 1992 House banking scandal and promised to cut congressional staffs by a quarter. Nor did the Democratic Congress have much experience working as a team with the Chief Executive. When Clinton took office, more than two-thirds of House Democrats and half of Senate Democrats had never served under a President of their party. Clinton aides called the relationship an "impossible embrace."

Still, everyone tried for a while to make the marriage work. With not a single Republican on their side, Democrats risked much by passing Clinton's bold package of tax hikes in 1993. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, a freshman elected by a fluke from a G.O.P. district, reluctantly cast the vote that put it over the top in the House. Republicans on the other side of the chamber waved their hankies at her and chanted, "Bye-bye, Margie." (Sure enough, she was gone in the next election, along with many other Democrats who had come to town on Clinton's coattails.) The Senate passed the package by a single vote as well, and the fight was even uglier. His powers of persuasion failing him with his onetime presidential rival Bob Kerrey, Clinton found himself shouting into the telephone at the Nebraska Senator, "F___ you!" He got Kerrey's vote, but Democrats wondered whether it had been worth the price when Clinton nimbly disavowed his tax hikes three years later.