How History Will Judge Him

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In the meantime, what can the first elected President to be impeached do to improve his chances before the bar of history? Clinton continues to be lucky in his enemies--first Newt Gingrich, then Kenneth Starr, today a Republican Party nearing the brink of incoherence. Senate Republicans and House Republicans detest each other; Republican Governors detest the Republican Congress; Northern Republicans detest the Southernization of the G.0.P.; economic and cultural conservatives are forever at sword's point. Maybe young George Bush will have the Reaganesque legerdemain to bring them all together, but that won't happen much before 2001.

Faced with an opposition in morose disarray, the reprieved President has two choices. He can play it safe or go for broke. Playing it safe means a minimalist program, doing this small thing for one group, that small thing for another, generally following the quasi-Republican line of the Democratic Leadership Council. This course may build a record of minor legislative accomplishment. It is unlikely to make a great impression on future historians.

Clinton must have noticed that when the wolf pack was after him, his D.L.C. pals took to the hills; the D.L.C. chairman, the sanctimonious Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, even went to the Senate floor to urge the pack on. Clinton's support, if less for the President than for the presidency, came from liberal Democrats: Senators Harkin, Dodd, Leahy, Kennedy and others in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

This might incline the President toward an attempt to set larger goals for the century ahead. It takes time for bold new ideas to work their way through Congress--and often they are improved in the process. Recall Medicare, for example. It was introduced by President Kennedy in 1961 and, after a long campaign of popular and congressional education, finally passed under President Johnson in 1965.

Let Clinton bring his considerable intelligence to bear on our major national problems and come up with persuasive remedies. Let him try his hand again at extending health coverage. Let him offer a strong national program to improve our schools and combat illiteracy. Let him press on in his search for ways to put Social Security and Medicare on a sound fiscal basis. Even though his initiatives may not achieve the statute books in the remaining months of his term, historians may credit him with establishing the agenda for the future. "Make no little plans," said Daniel Burnham, the great Chicago architect. "They have no magic to stir men's blood."

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR. is a historian, writer and former special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.