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By George F. Will
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IN THE SUMMER OF 1901, AT WILLIAM MCKINLEY'S HOME in Canton, Ohio, a photographer approached to take the president's picture. McKinley laid aside his cigar, saying, ""We must not let the young men of this country see their president smoking!'' That camera was a harbinger of the graphic revolution in communication that would help enlarge the place of the presidency -- the most photogenic piece of America's government -- in the nation's consciousness. McKinley was a transitional figure. He had presided over America's passage into imperialism in the war with Spain, and his assassination late that summer produced the first modern president, Theodore Roosevelt, who proclaimed his office a ""bully pulpit'' for shaping the public's mind and morals.
But this century that began with the magnification of the presidency and of America's world role is ending with the miniaturization of the presidency and America's role. Just two years ago this was said: Bill Clinton will bring 1960s idealism to the presidency, scrubbing the coarseness from public life. He will stop the movement of Southern votes to Republicans. And he will shift the focus of the presidency from foreign policy to bold domestic initiatives. However, today an impression of personal seediness and foreign policy incompetence is causing Clinton's support to hemorrhage, especially in the South.
In 1992 voters heard tapes of his conversations with Gennifer Flowers and he still won his party's nomination, causing many people to conclude that such matters have little political importance. And when his campaign scanted foreign policy, many people concluded that foreign policy would be unimportant to his presidency. But today, even though the economy is robust, the president's standing is remarkably low and Democrats are reeling from a string of electoral defeats, most recently in a Kentucky congressional district that had elected Democrats for 129 years. All this may have something to do with talk radio reeking of japes about the presidential penis, and a foreign policy in shambles.
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In Kentucky the Republican winner ran directly against Clinton, evidence of the increasing ""nationalization'' of congressional races. As Republicans try to turn this year's contests into referendums on Clinton, he may do what embattled presidents tend to do. He may look to the loyalty of his base, which means the liberal core of the Democratic Party. But there is another problem on the horizon. He is under intense pressure to keep a campaign promise, the one on ""end to welfare as we know it.'' The country's deepening conservatism has moved the welfare debate rightward, to the point that a consensus is emerging that the paramount goal of reform should be to discourage illegitimate births (currently 68 percent of African-American births and 30 percent of all births). Clinton is ready to propose expanding federal permission for states to impose ""family caps,'' denying increased payments for women who have additional children while on welfare. This idea infuriates liberals, who regard it as racist, sexist and incompatible with contemporary liberalism's core value, compassion.
Presidents facing a sea of domestic troubles sometimes look overseas for relief. Certainly Clinton's foreign policy record could use some burnishing. He allowed ""mission creep'' to turn a humanitarian mission in Somalia into a debacle of warlord-chasing and nation-building. In the Balkans he has seemed eager to abdicate his leadership and the nation's sovereignty in favor of a tangle of U.N. and NATO authorities. Having made trade with China dependent on that nation's compliance with an aggressive list of human rights demands, Clinton then went from warning China not to think that mere cosmetic concessions would suffice, to asking for cosmetic concessions that would enable him to back down with minimal embarrassment. China did not deign to help. The gravest crisis confronting America is North Korea's accelerating drive to become a nuclear power and perhaps a merchant of weapons of mass destruction for other outlaw regimes. Clinton's policy of brandishing carrots before a carnivorous regime has collapsed. His ringing rhetoric about any North Korean nuclear capability being unacceptable stands revealed as mere bluster.
In foreign policy, failures can breed fiascos, initiatives improvidently undertaken to compensate for, or distract attention from, previous misadventures. Which brings us to, and perhaps into, Haiti.
Clinton apparently considers an invasion an option. An invasion appeals to some liberal factions precisely because Haiti is entirely without economic or geopolitical significance. It is a perfect place for liberal idealism, unblemished by any consideration as sordid as the U.S. national interest. And just as liberal activism at home often is directed at correcting problems that liberal activism has created or aggravated (welfare, public housing and homelessness come to mind), regarding Haiti one reason for an invasion would be to prevent the flood of refugees that may be provoked by the Clinton administration's policy of severe economic sanctions.
An invasion of Haiti would be, militarily, small beer, but would be grand in the liberal manner, involving lots of social engineering. William Gray is Clinton's special envoy for Haiti and a former officer of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is eager to topple Haiti's military regime. Gray says toppling that regime would not suffice. We also must install democracy and ""ensure that the military and police are compatible with democratic values'' and ""bring economic growth.'' Those would be three achievements without Haitian precedents.
Clinton is fresh from commemorating D-Day, the greatest American event of the Second World War. It was the government's ability to organize society and marshal resources for victory that gave government unprecedented prestige with the American people in 1945. The story of the squandering of that prestige is a large theme of the second half of this century. Clinton may regret that he governs now rather than then. However, he courts a jolting comeuppance when, regarding a range of matters from health care to Haiti, he forgets how far his presidency is from a ""bully pulpit,'' and how American confidence in government has withered in 50 years.
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