Public Policy Sources #33:
The “New Democrat” Model in Practice

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New Democrats purport to challenge… Republican thinking. What they actually do is co-opt it, and then wrap it in a coat of nice, warm rhetoric.82

As one would expect, President Clinton argues that seven years of New Democrat leadership has borne out the wisdom of those meetings, declarations, and publications stimulated by the founding of the DLC in the mid-1980s. Clinton proudly asserts that, “We have the smallest government in 35 years, but a more progressive one. We have a smaller government, but a stronger nation.83 He informs his fellow citizens that, “We have called our approach ‘the third way’—with a government that is more active, more effective, less expensive; one that can bring us together and move us forward, not drive us apart and set us back.”84 Do the facts support the rhetoric? It appears that, to be charitable, the evidence is mixed. For example, an examination of the claims regarding the size and cost of government produces the following results: in 1997, the federal government spent US$1.772 trillion dollars, an increase of US$242.5 billion over Clinton’s first year in office; meanwhile, federal government spending as a percentage of GDP was 22.2 in 1997, or 4.4 percent higher than a generation earlier.85 Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP have risen every year since 1992. Currently, they are at their highest point since 1944.

On July 16, 1992, Clinton’s nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in New York City had been crafted around the theme of a “New Covenant” between Americans and their federal government. Once in office, however, Clinton spent much of his first two years moving the policy pendulum to the left. As president, Clinton successfully raised taxes in his first budget. Clinton’s first significant policy initiative was the attempt to nationalize America’s health care system. It is noteworthy that Clinton maintains that this constituted a Third Way initiative, as it rejected the socialist alternative — a single payer (that is, government-funded) system.86

In December 1994, in the traumatic aftermath of the historic Republican take-over of both Houses of Congress, Clinton turned to political consultant Dick Morris for political marketing counsel. Morris’ diagnosis was that Clinton was perceived, especially on social and cultural issues, as too liberal. Middle-class voters, especially, no longer felt the President was on their side, or shared their values, as he had suggested in 1992.87 As such, Clinton should ignore the advice of congressional partisans and staffers and, instead, emphasize those moderate and, in some cases, traditionally Republican causes, that Morris’ late 1994 polling for the White House spelled out as the framework for a centrist re-election platform. Specifically, Morris argued, voters wanted tax cuts, economic growth, more spending on education, and an emphasis on family-oriented programs.88

The culmination of Morris’ polling and reflection was a Machiavellian marketing strategy that he termed “triangulation.”89 The genesis of this strategic turn lay in a memorandum sent to the White House by British Labour Party pollster Philip Gould. Gould argued the applicability of French President Francois Mitterand’s adoption of a similar strategy when seeking re-election in 1988. In short, triangulation meant the repositioning of Clinton both between and above his liberal congressional party and the conservative Republicans in Congress, that is, at the apex of a political triangle. From this electoral vantage point in the political centre, so Morris argued, Clinton would be in a position to appropriate the most saleable policies from both sides and to embrace issues lying outside traditional partisan politics and presidential concern.90 In this manner, Clinton would appear more moderate and reasonable than either the Republicans or more traditional Democrats. The first course of action recommended by Morris was the neutralization of Republican strengths on the issues of taxes, crime, foreign policy, and welfare. This would be accomplished by minimizing the policy differences between Clinton and his opponents. Between early 1995 and late 1996, the Clinton White House adjusted itself to the reality that the American electorate was in a broadly conservative frame of mind. Having done so, Clinton was in a position to campaign on his own strengths, such as education and the environment.

In policy terms, triangulation meant a marriage of the public generosity of liberalism with the realism of conservatism. Morris’s advice was to emphasize values over economic issues. Supported by communications director Donald Baer and domestic policy advisor Bruce Reed, this advice was based on the extensive quantitative and qualitative research performed by pollsters Mark Penn and Douglas Schoen.91 Penn’s and Schoen’s polling found that traditionally non-presidential issues, such as television violence and teenage smoking, were important to families, especially young married couples. Specifically, a value-centred campaign meant an emphasis on the family, children, and seniors.92 This meant a campaign targeted at a politically moderate, middle-class coalition of swing voters living in suburban families, whose concerns were with social issues and fiscal frugality more than with economic security and wages.93 These swing voters comprised 54 percent of the electorate.94 With a synthesis of compassion and toughness, illustrated by the pronouncement of a series of small, simplistic policies addressing practical aspects of contemporary family life, Clinton could persuade these voters to give him another term.

Clinton’s January 23, 1996, State of the Union speech to Congress achieved its goal in that it seized for Clinton’s campaign the centre ground of American politics, successfully blurring his differences with the Republicans, and distancing himself from liberal Democrats. Twice during his hour-long oration Clinton reminded his audience that “The era of big government is over.” This repositioning stood in stark contrast to his first State of the Union speech only three years earlier, when he had proclaimed that “Government must do more.” According to the post-speech media polls, between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans approved of Clinton’s triangulation-based speech and its Third Way calls for greater emphasis upon personal responsibility, welfare reform, family values, law and order, and curbs on illegal immigration.95

By 1999, with a balanced budget and an economy in an expansionary mood since the last year of President Bush’s term of office, Clinton’s activist instincts came to the fore. In his 1999 budget, Clinton unveiled a laundry list of new spending programs, including the still-born idea that the federal government purchase shares on the stock market as a financial safety net for social security. After having raised taxes early on in his presidency, for the past few years Clinton’s chosen instrument for meddling in fiscal policy has been the tax credit. This reflects, at least in part, a Third Way obsession with micromanaging individuals’ financial decision-making. Strategists such as Morris counter the free market position that more of the taxpayers’ money should be returned to them to spend as they see fit. Morris’ revealing Clintonian retort is, “Yes, but how do we know they’ll spend it on the right things.” On other issues, such as welfare reform, the Republican majority in Congress has provided Clinton with the policy ammunition and the political cover to sign on to bold, overdue measures. There has been some limited progress regarding “reinventing” government. Sadly, the really significant gains will not accrue until certain parts of government are deinvented, not merely made to perform less inefficiently. Clinton’s major positions and actions on social policy similarly reflect a timid, government-knows-best inclination. His opposition to school vouchers and support of the “War on Drugs,” affirmative action, and gun control belie any claim that Clinton may have to radical or innovative Third Way policymaking.

The New Democrat strand of the Third Way movement also has important adherents at the state level, most notably in the governor’s office in Sacramento, California. Elected governor, in November 1998, by an overwhelming 20 percentage points after campaigning on a relatively moderate Democratic policy platform, Gray Davis used his January 4th, 1999 inaugural address to outline his plans to govern from the “pragmatic centre.” As governor, Davis sought to borrow ideas from both the right and the left, to combine both government intervention and private initiative to solve collective problems, and to be both “tough-minded and big-hearted.”

Since January, Davis has placed policy emphasis on education reform. Many of his ideas are laudable, including holding schools accountable for their students’ academic performance, ending social promotion, introducing merit pay for teachers, and removing “deficient” teachers. However, whether it is the outgrowth of a genuine commitment to New Democrat views on the primacy of a public (that is, government) education system or the fact that so significant a portion of his campaign budget was funded by labour (especially the teachers’) unions, Davis’ California-style Third Way places particular emphasis upon appeals to labour unions and racial minorities, hence his opposition to school vouchers and his support of immoderate affirmative action, along with such short-sighted policies as guaranteeing to the top four percent of each high school’s graduating class admission to the University of California.

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