Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Clinton may cook up an ideological gumbo Date: Mon, 26 Oct 92 14:37:03 EST Message-ID: \SE D;LIFE \HD Clinton may cook up an ideological gumbo \BY Sean Piccoli \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES When Ronald Reagan and George Bush came to Washington, they drew an army of conservatives that cast itself in the commander-in-chief's own mold. These were the Reaganauts, those can-do Republicans with dark, sensible suits in their closets and realpolitik on their serious young minds. Together, the Reagan-Bush minutemen and women quickly wiped the Federal City clean of any lingering peanut-farmer traces and gave Washington the distinctly Burberry look it has worn since 1981. But now, with the economy stumbling and President Bush fumbling, the White House's next political magnet and role model could be an entirely different creature. We're talking about a Southern-born Rhodes scholar who plays saxophone and eats junk food. So, if Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton gets the keys to Washington, who will follow him through the door? "My guess would be that the Democrats who come to town to take over will be a more eclectic group than has been here over the past 12 years," says Washington power-lobbyist Charls E. Walker, a former Treasury undersecretary in the Nixon administration and a prominent figure in Washington's so-called shadow government. "Clinton is much more middle-of-the-road," Mr. Walker says, "and I think that will be sort of a rallying point for Democrats of all spectrums, all types and all geographies. And demographically, there'll be a lot more mixing. . . . It'll be more of a stew." A recipe offered by various Washington insiders and observers of capital life suggests that Clinton Stew, should folks decide to order it on Election Day, will be a gumbo - crammed with ingredients of every sort. Start with a hardy stock, made of Democratic Leadership Council centrist-wonk types. Sprinkle generously with folks from the Arkansas kitchen cabinet. Add various academics and public-policy school graduates. Parse and toss into the pot a few Bush Republicans or closet Buckleyites who are warming, for employment purposes, to the "Demoderate" message. Garnish profusely with leftovers from the last Democratic presidency and, lastly, season with a few Walter Mondale-Michael Dukakis advisers. Expect a few ideologues answering Hillary Clinton's siren song to slip into the seasoning, too. Then, to cook properly, get out the blow-dryer. Dave Mason predicts the Clinton Democrats will give Washington "a more Southern and quaint flavor" - up to a point. "You're not going to see people walking 'coon dogs down K Street," says Mr. Mason, director of executive-branch liaison at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "You are going to get a lot of Arkansans," he says, "but they'll be reformed liberal Arkies who will alternately celebrate and disavow their roots. . . . There'll be people running around town in pickup trucks with Razorback bumper stickers." Those who say Bill's World will be top- and middle-heavy with Arkansans note that the Clinton-Gore campaign is headquartered in Little Rock, Ark. Those who say he'll pick and choose largely from the Beltway pool point out how firmly he has plugged himself into the Power City and Democratic Party networks. "From what I hear, unlike Jimmy Carter, it isn't going to be the Kitchen Cabinet," says Craig Stoltz, former editor of the late Washington-watcher's magazine, Dossier. "[Mr. Clinton] has worked assiduously to ingratiate himself to people in think tanks and the Democratic foreign policy shadow government. "The shadow government types, they'll have to blow off some of the dust and start getting their hair done for TV again," Mr. Stoltz says. Look also for a healthy crop of postgraduates. "There's an entire generation of policy analysts, specialists, economists and lawyers who have finished school and are not getting jobs because they're Democrats," says William Schneider, an opinion analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. These wonk wannabes got their credentials from fashionable places like Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs. They think of themselves as politically neutral, although they believe in activist government. "They are the 'Clintonistas,' " Mr. Schneider says. "A whole generation of them has been missing from public life. And the Clinton administration is where they'll be looking for jobs." How overtly political the profile of a Clintonista turns out to be "depends on the margin of his victory," says Paul Craig Roberts, a syndicated columnist and economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If he has a large victory, a landslide, then it will run away with him. He'll get a lot of unqualified left-wing types who believe they have a mandate for revenge against Reaganism, and the whole thing will come a-cropper. It will be just a mess." "On the other hand," Mr. Roberts says, "if he has a close victory, which shows that he really isn't popular and it was just anger at Bush, then he will probably have to find some Republican to be Treasury secretary." This is crushing news to anyone who saw the candidate on MTV and thought the Clinton brigades would look like a Bennetton commercial. Still, people predict the Clintonite hordes, whoever they are, will make Washington a more casual affair. "I think it'll be a much looser kind of group than what has been here under the Republicans," says Adrian Havill, a Washington-based author and stockbroker. Mr. Walker agrees. "I think it'll be a little more relaxed than the Reagan years," he says. "I don't think it will be anything like the Carter years, with Carter walking down the avenue carrying his own luggage bag or trying to ban 'Hail to the Chief.' But I don't think it will look quite as uptown as the Reagan White House." So. The Clinton Democrat will be many things to many people, a category-defying amalgam of influences - Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, Mondale, Dukakis, industrial, environmental, blue collar, academic, Southern working class, Midwestern common-sensical, Northeastern elite - a fractional assemblage of all the parts, politics, political debts and incumbencies the Democrats have accumulated during 12 years on the outs. For a better picture, just open your child's copy of "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster. There you will find the Dodecahedron, a geometric character who sums it up nicely with this boast: "My angles are many. My sides are not few. I'm the Dodecahedron. Who are you?" This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM