Clinton, hope and illusion
International Viewpoint #242 February 1993
THE election of Bill Clinton produced euphoria in diverse quarters, from trade union bureaucrats and mainstream liberal leaders, to ordinary people frightened by the influence of the fanatical religious right in social policy during the Reagan-Bush era, to sectors of the economic and corporate elite. DAVID FINKEL - Detroit, January 15, 1993
R ARELY has so much expecta-
tion been so little justified. Even in the US bourgeois political spectrum Clinton is nowhere near the "left" and never pretended to be. During the campaign Clinton did make two significant human rights' pledges; to stop the monstrous (and illegal) Bush policy of mass repatriation of Haitian refugees without hearings and to lift the ban on gays and lesbians in the military. The week before taking office Clinton had already reversed himself on the first, was retreating on the second, and was fully supporting Bush's renewed bombing of Iraq.
The new dispensation
By the eve of Clinton's inauguration, the new political dispensation was coming into clearer focus. A glance at Clinton's cabinet appointments makes the point clearly enough.! Warren Christopher, Clinton's designated Secretary of State (responsible for foreign affairs), apparently received army intelligence reports on antiwar and Black activists during the 1960s when he served in Lyndon Johnson's administration. He subsequently misled Congress on this point during the 1970s when testifying as a Deputy Secretary of State for Jimmy Carter, in which capacity he was deeply involved in Carter's support for the Shah of Iran and the disastrous confrontation with the Islamic revolution.
The critical economic policy appointments have gone to the likes of Lloyd Bentsen, designated Secretary of the Treasury who is known for his political conservatism, his connections with Big Oil and his commitment to lower taxes for business and the
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TOo LOOK BAD TO ME SECONOMY "discipline" of budget cutting. So popular was this appointment in capitalist circles that Bentsen was recommended for confirmation by the Senate Finance Committee before asking him any questions.
An elite liberal Harvard economist, Robert Reich, associated with proponents of moderate economic stimulus and a vague version of "industrial policy" (investment in economic infrastructure, worker training and so on) had been considered a candidate for the Treasury position. Interestingly, Clinton appointed Reich instead as Secretary of Labour, a position which in "traditional" Democratic administrations has gone to someone with union connections. Reich's only — indirect - link to labour is a seat on the research committee of a labour-funded Economic Policy Institute, but he has been friends with Clinton since their Rhodes Scholar days in the 1960s.
Having made sure that the core of his cabinet would be welcomed by corporate capital and the investment houses, Clinton set out to redeem his promise to create "a government that looks like America". The results suggest what his own America looks like. Ron Brown, an African American who chairs the Democratic National Committee and who by profession is a paid lobbyist for corporate and government clients, is to be Secretary of Commerce.
The designated Secretary of Health and Human Services and Attorney General? are women with feminist reputations and therefore not to the liking of the right wing; the latter appointment is also a top attorney for the insurance giant Aetna Life and Casualty.
This entrenchment of "corporate feminism" in the administration will serve a double purpose. While affording a pretence
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REST PLUS SMILING of representing women, it will also lend support to the highly touted "medical insurance reform" that Clinton has promised to unveil within his first 100 days in office.
Far from the kind of national health programme that people in most advanced capitalist states take for granted, Clinton's anticipated "managed competition" proposal will enrol the 37 million people currently without insurance in rock-bottom programmes with minimal benefits and no choice of doctors, administered at great profit by the existing lucrative insurance corporations. Meanwhile, those people, especially unionized workers, enjoying health care benefits above the minimum care level will pay tax on them.
An observer in New York described the atmosphere that prevailed just prior to election day as "a tremendous atmosphere of anticipation and mobilization around the gay community with Clinton/Gore buttons all over, especially in the gay bars, torchlight parades, voter turnout drives, you name it" Partly there was a real expectation of what Clinton "will do for us" partly a real sense that if Bush were re-elected "we will be rounded up for the concentration camps".
The cover of the Communication Workers of America union newspaper CWA News for November-December 1992 carried a picture of Clinton on the cover waving,
1. In the US government system with its strong presidency, the Cabinet positions are the equivalent of ministerial portfolios in a parliamentary system, but Cabinet officials are themselves not elected legislators. They are subject to approval by the Congress, which is generally granted after some ritual mudslinging.
2. Since this article was written, Clinton's nomination for Attorney General, Zoe Baird, has been forced to withdraw following the disclosure that she had illegally employed undocumented immigrants as domestic servants.
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International Viewpoint #242 February 1993 with a quote from his victory speech: "This victory was more than a victory of party, it was a victory of the people who work hard and play by the rules... who are ready to compete and win in the global economy but who need a government that offers a hand, not a handout". The whole centrefold was devoted to the CWA's mobilization effort for Clinton. This spectacle was typical of the union press, notwithstanding Clinton's stated support for the North American Free trade Agreement (NAFTA) which the labour movement opposes, his support for the law banning the union shop in Arkansas? and his pointed refusal to issue a mild statement in support of the unions when challenged to do so during the Democratic primaries.
Enthusiasm on the left
The enthusiasm carried deep into the left, in the US and internationally. The leftliberal/social democratic weekly In These Times ran Clinton banners on the cover of its post-election "sixteenth anniversary issue". The Nation, which has taken an editorial line critical of Clinton, received numerous letters from angry readers taking the editors to task for failing to recognize the election as a major victory for the left.
It wasn't just the gay community, African Americans, workers and liberals, however, who supported Clinton. To mention a few others: Arthur Laffer, the economist of the "Laffer Curve" and the so-called supplyside Reagan revolution, supported Clinton because Bush had raised taxes and, said Laffer, because Bush was fixated on the deficit. Milton Friedman, not known for his leftwing economic prescriptions, also favored Clinton.
William Safire, the guru of conservative opinion, also supported Clinton in this election. The neo-conservative and ardently Zionist Safire had his own axe to grind, because Bush had failed to carry out Yitzhak Shamir's programme of dismembering Iraq and had quarreled with Israel over a settlement freeze, but he was also reflecting the general conservative view that Bush had failed. A media report that Ronald Reagan himself had voted for Bill Clinton was only weakly and obliquely half-denied by the ex-President's press secretary.
The social crisis, which continues unabated by the shuffling of power within capitalist political elites, played a role in the outcome of the election. There was a certain trickle-up effect, especially from the social explosion in Los Angeles, whereby some privileged layers began to understand the presence of a crisis in this society that ultimately threatens them.
Mike Davis, a Marxist writer specializing in the urban crisis, put his finger on this phenomenon in an interview after the L.A. uprising in the journal Social Text in response to a question on the national implications of the uprising:
"Well, I think the national implications for the surviving, embattled and very few traditional liberals left in the Democratic Party is that this is the time to go on the offensive. This is part of the death agony of our cities. First deindustrialization, and then fifteen years of winding down federal aid to the cities which have been made the repository of our national social problems. This is the time to go back on the offensive and to make rebuilding of the cities the central national goal, to use the peace dividend for the cities.
"This has a terrible urgency. Middle class people have been working on a false political calculus for the last ten to fifteen years, and the calculus is that they can allow the decay of one third of the society and never have to face any consequences becau se of their ability to move to gated suburbs, to move beyond the big cities - the chickens will never come home to roost. This is showing that they will. One of the major outcomes of this riot is the new visceral sense of white, middle-class insecurity... It certainly puts the big cities, and the state of the big cities, back in the forefront of national poli-
Davis' insight points out that South Central L.A. put the system, and some of those who have benefited most during the 1980s, on notice about the depth of the crisis. The election of Clinton (and the pseudo-populist Perot phenomenon among the white electorate) reflected a combination of popular discontent and a decision within the ruling class that Bush had failed.
### Popular illusions
At the base of society, Clinton's election has given rise to both hope and illusion. The socialist responsibility is to address the hope, and politicize it without building the illusions.
That the incoming administration feels pressure neither from right nor left was symbolized by Clinton's announcement that he would lift the ban on lesbians and gay men in the US military. This represented primarily a statement to the right wing and the religious fanatics that they no longer wield power and that their services are no longer
Winning the right of gay people to serve in the army will be a democratic victory. At the same time, military service hasn't been the leading demand of the gay movement.
Rather, this movement has mobilized people in the street fighting for massive funding for
AIDS research and full civil rights protection. Such things cost money and require legislative fights whereas the military ban can be lifted by simple executive order, although even on this issue Clinton is now seeking a "compromise"
Clinton can and probably will do a number of things that don't cost money. He can lift the "gag order" - the infamous Bush directive that prohibited federally funded family planning clinics from mentioning abortion to their clients — and remove other petty brutalities of the Bush regime. Programmes that cost money are another matter, and that's where the Cabinet appointments are teaching the liberals their place — that is, outside the halls of power.
With one exception, no fighting movement will come from the liberals. That exception is the abortion rights movement. They will demand a Freedom of Choice Act and there probably will be such a bill — one which, however, will leave states plenty of room for imposing restrictions and encumbrances on the right to choose. The pro-choice leadership may find itself forced to be critical of Clinton, yet also dependent on him to fight rightwing blocking amendments or a filibuster.
Except on abortion rights little should be expected in the way of struggle from the liberals. They are, on the one hand, afraid of a Clinton failure and a revival of the rightwing and, on the other, of the social explo sion from below. They backed Clinton precisely to defend them from those two dangers Tragically, the left remains too small and ineffective to fill the vacuum of opposition.
The most important commitment of this administration, in fact, will be to free trade, labour-management cooperation and other schemes to enhance US capitalist competitiveness. Some of the most sinister of these policies are easier for a Democratic administration to implement, given the cooperation of the labour bureaucracy, than for Republicans.
One example was cited by railroad worker activist Lynn Henderson, who spoke at a conference of Labor Party Advocatest in Detroit as the editor of the rail paper Straight Track. Henderson discussed how proposed legislation to abolish "permanent replacement workers" will include binding arbitration to settle strikes. So, to protect themselves from losing their jobs to scabs, workers will sacrifice their right to negotiate their contract.
These measures were contained in the so-called "Packwood amendments" to antistrikebreaker legislation that died in
Congress last year. This year the legislation will be proposed again. While the AFL-CIO
3. This law, perversely called "right to work" in Arkansas and other states mostly in the US South, makes it illegal for unions to negotiate a 100% union shop with an employer.
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