Oval Office
President Clinton contacted Dick Morris, an
associate of seventeen years, one
month before the 1994 gubernatorial
elections with one goal in mind, to win the
1996 presidential election.
His intentions were to get Morris’s help to win
back the presidency and
redefine his image as the Commander in Chief. With the
notion of the
permanent campaign, Clinton was able to gain back public appeal
and win the
1996 election with ease. Recent history has shown that presidents
can not
only be brought down by their failures but by their successes as
well.
Although they may accomplish what they say they are going to,
failures to
initiate new programs and innovate cause voters to lose interest.
This was where
Dick Morris and the permanent campaign stepped in. Clinton
employed Morris to
figure out which way the public was going on issues and
what they really wanted
out of their president. What the majority of people
wanted was change. The
public wanted a president who acted like a president.
The use of extensive
polling helped Morris and Clinton determine the popular
stances on issues, which
arguments were more persuasive, and why certain
voters liked or disliked the
President. Clinton needed to get a clear
idea of how he had gone wrong in the
eyes of his public in order to get back
on track with them. Polling was not used
to tell the President what to do,
but was a good gauge as to what the public
felt was important for him to do
and where they stood as a society. Clinton’s
easy win in 1996 was a result of
his new definition of the job and the new
substance that was added to his
campaign. It was not the result of"spinning." Spinning refers to when
consultants or "spin doctors" change
the way in which their candidates and
their positions on issues are presented.
Substance is not created. Their
views are merely twisted to change the
public’s perception of them. What Dick
Morris did with Bill Clinton was not
spinning. Morris used already set
positions that had not been publicized and put
them out in the open. He used
the Presidents basic themes and found new issues
that would accentuate his
views on them. He never intended to change the
President’s mind or "flip
flop" on anything but instead brought to
attention the Presidents already
taken positions that would be popular among
voters. This added new substance
to Clinton’s campaign. At first, instead of
following through with the things
that won him the election in 1992, Clinton
sought to please his Congressional
Democrats and gain party support. Morris felt
that if they continued to worry
about pleasing congressional Democrats, they
would get nowhere. Clinton did
not wish completely abandon his Democratic Party.
He only wished to
change it. Another factor leading to President Clinton’s
success was
Triangulation. The President succeeded in creating a third person
that
accommodated the needs of both parties yet was unique to him. He attempted
to
pull both sides more towards the center discovering a common ground in
which
both parties’ views could be molded into one moderate consensus. One
major
example of Triangulation was Clinton’s tax-cut. Morris explained that
the
Republicans wanted tax cuts for the rich, and the Democrats did not
want tax
cuts of any kind. To create a third argument Clinton proposed a
broad-based tax
cut based on functional differences instead of economic
class. This was greatly
approved by the public who was becoming much more
concerned with society as a
whole rather than the individual. Another example
was Clinton’s "Pile of
Vetoes Speech," where he reached out to
congressional Republicans to move more
towards the middle. Dick Morris urged
the President to take moderate positions
overall but to take strong and
opposing positions on the worst of the right wing
issues like abortion, gun
control, and militia. The public was tired of
Republican extremism, and
wanted to move forward. Dick Morris said, "In
politics, power and information
are everything." There was a great lack of
communication between the two
parties. This ended when Clinton, Morris, and
Republican Trent Lott
formed an alliance that would prove vital in the years to
come. Lott was a
conservative but not extreme right wing. Clinton trusted him.
He was a
man that honestly believed in doing what was best for the country.
This
bi-partisan backchannel allowed them to coordinate their views to work
for both
parties. Lott could help Clinton with Republican votes. In turn,
Clinton could
let Lott know where he and the Democrats stood on issues. This
relationship with
Lott was important in passing the welfare reform,
health care plan, and minimum
wage legislation. Also, with Morris at
Clinton’s side, there was a great deal
of dissention between the President
and his staff. This new alliance had
basically separated them from the rest
of the Democratic Party. Morris felt that
there were four keys to Clinton’s
easy victory in the 1996 election. The first
was his decision to compete for
the center with his balanced-budget speech in
1995. This speech helped
because, although not all of his proposals would be
passed, he would
differentiate himself from both conventional Democrats and
Republicans.
The speech proposed how to balance the budget not whether or not to
do so.
The next was his decision to advertise early and continually throughout
the
campaign. It was the first fully advertised presidency in history.
The
campaign spent 85 million dollars on advertising in 1996, which doubled
that of
1992. However, not just anybody with money can win an election
through
advertising. Clinton advertised the positions that were popular with
the public.
Clinton’s advertisements worked because his moderate budget
plan made sense to
the American people as a way to achieve a balanced budget
without cutting
popular programs. They brought legislative issues to the
American public early
on and left the Republican issues dead in the water.
The third key was the
President’s State of the Union Address in 1996 that
further accentuated the
advertisements. Before the speech Clinton was a
minority president but finished
a majority president. Approval ratings rose
drastically. The last key to his
victory was his decision to sign the
welfare-reform bill in 1996. This gave the
Republicans virtually no
chance of catching Clinton’s lead. In many ways
Clinton and his
triangulated third force won the election. However, The
Republican Party
had their fair share of chances to challenge the campaign.
Republicans
felt that in order to beat Clinton they had to obliterate him. They
felt that
they needed to lower his support and raise his negatives, and
ineffectively
used negative attacks and ads, which only detracted from both
parties.
Clinton’s values campaign showed the average American what an
activist
president could do for them. Clinton was able to take over the center
on
Republicans’ fiscal, welfare, and crime issues. Republicans failed to
develop
any new ideas on values issues. Republicans were caught by their right
wing
just like the Democrats in the 80s were by their left wing. Democrats
could
now use pro-lifers, handgun owners, tobacco lobbyists, and militiamen,
to put
the worst of the extreme right wing in public view. Also, Dole was so
worried
about losing to Gramm, he left the budget alone until he got the
Republican
nomination. Republican voters wanted tax cuts and a balanced
budget and Dole
could have had their support had he proposed any plans for
them. Primary voters
felt that he was not able to get anything done. Even
when Republicans proposed
their deal they stuck to it despite the public’s
disapproval.