Despite the daunting odds, however, Clinton approached health care reform in an unusual way. Rather than relying on official aides, congressional hearings, or government departments, he enlisted First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ira Magaziner, an old friend with a background in management consulting, to develop a plan. Their Health Care Task Force bypassed the stakeholders in official Washington and instead conducted meetings on its own with an array of academics and medical experts. In September 1993, they unveiled their proposal, a bulky 1,342 page plan that ignored liberal calls for a single-payer plan like the one used in Canada and instead advocated an employer-based plan of managed competition. Under the plan, employers would be required to pay for 80 percent of their employees’ health benefits. Regional insurance-purchasing alliances would then promote “managed competition” among private insurers, thereby using market forces to lower premiums. The government would step in and provide coverage for the unemployed, thus effectively ensuring universal coverage.18
The plan immediately ran into serious opposition. Smaller insurance companies worried they would be squeezed out of the market by larger competitors, while small businesses were upset that they would have to bear the brunt of much of their workers’ health care costs. They banded together and spent millions of dollars on TV ads to defeat the proposal. The most effective starred a middle-aged, middle-class white couple playing characters known as “Harry and Louise.” One ad showed them at their kitchen table, sorting through a stack of forms as the narrator warned that “the government may force us to pick from a few health care plans designed by government bureaucrats.” “They choose,” Harry said; “we lose,” Louise answered.19
As the ad campaign helped turn public opinion against the Clinton health care plan, Republicans seized the moment. Conservatives claimed that the plan, despite its reliance on private insurance companies and free-market competition, was actually “socialized medicine.” This same battle cry had been used against Harry Truman when he proposed national health care in 1946 and 1949, and used again against Medicare until Congress passed the program in 1965. House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich claimed that the Clintons were “going against the entire tide of Western history. Centralized command bureaucracies are dying. This is the end of that era, not the beginning of it.” The political assault was so effective that the health care proposal was never even brought up for a vote in the Democratic Congress. Instead, it was quietly allowed to die in August 1994.20
In the end, Clinton emerged from these fights—over gays in the military, the progressive tax increase, and health care reform—as little more than a caricature of outdated liberalism. During his run for the presidency, he’d managed to escape the fate of Michael Dukakis. But now that he was president, Clinton had essentially been painted into the same corner.
Republican Revolution
As congressional Democrats floundered and Clinton’s stock fell in 1994, the timing was right for a challenge by the GOP, under Newt Gingrich’s leadership. Gingrich’s rise to power had begun a decade earlier. Determined to create a bold new vision for the conservative wing of the Republican Party, the young representative from Georgia had formed the “Conservative Opportunity Society” (COS). In the new group, Gingrich gathered together a new generation of congressmen who would fight to advance an aggressive style of conservative politics. COS members had three goals: (1) tear down the Democrats; (2) advance a bold new agenda for the Republicans; and then (3) take control of the Republican Party itself. As they liked to say, only two little things stood in their way: the Democrats and the Republicans.21
While policies were important, the COS revolutionaries initially focused their attention more on publicity. The group’s origin coincided with the installation of live television coverage in the House of Representatives. In 1979, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, or “C-SPAN,” began televising sessions from the House floor. Gingrich and his allies resolved to use the new media for their own ends. Each morning, they met to decide on a topic for the day and then made brief one-minute televised speeches attacking the Democrats on that theme. Each night, when the House chamber was virtually empty, they would return to take advantage of extended time set aside for “special orders.” In the spring of 1984, Gingrich and others from COS took over the floor during one of these empty evening sessions to attack the Democrats for refusing to support the Nicaraguan Contras. Charging their opponents with appeasement, Gingrich said the Democrats had a “pessimistic, defeatist, and skeptical view toward the American role in the world.” He then proceeded to denounce several specific Democratic congressmen of being “blind to Communism.” Gingrich singled them out by name and dared them to respond. None of them could, of course, because the rest of the chamber was empty. But on television, where the C-SPAN cameras were fixed firmly on the speaker’s spot, viewers simply saw Gingrich daring his targets to defend themselves, followed by an ominous silence. When Democrats realized what had happened, they were outraged. Speaker Tip O’Neill ordered the C-SPAN cameras to start panning around the chamber when Gingrich and his allies made their speeches from then on, to show that there was no one in the room listening to them. Gingrich, however, didn’t care. He said at least one person was out there watching, and that was enough.22
In 1989, Gingrich made his newfound power clear when he ended the career of Democratic congressman Jim Wright, who had succeeded Tip O’Neill as Speaker two years before. With only a little evidence at first, Gingrich worked tirelessly to build an ethics case to destroy Wright. He sent a member of his staff to Texas to dig up whatever dirt he could find in the congressman’s personal life, compiling a thick file of clippings from newspaper stories that raised questions about Wright’s business dealings and then distributing it to anyone who would listen. And, to be sure, the media listened. Gingrich repeatedly called reporters and editorial writers across the country to press the story. “The number-one fact about the news media is that they love fights,” he later noted. “When you give them confrontations, you get attention.” And attention, he knew, would prompt action: “We worked on the assumption that if enough newspapers said there should be an investigation . . . [then] members would say it. It would happen.” 23
Prompted by Gingrich’s crusade and complaints from the good government organization Common Cause, the House Ethics Committee soon opened a formal investigation of Wright. In April 1989, it issued a multicount indictment on charges that revolved around a suspect book deal, in which Wright received an unusually high percentage of royalties, and some gifts they believed he had improperly accepted from a lobbyist in his Fort Worth district. A month later, Wright announced his resignation from Congress. In an emotional farewell address, he called on his colleagues to put to an end the “mindless cannibalism” that was starting to consume the institution. Democrats were furious. “There’s an evil wind blowing in the halls of Congress today that’s reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition,” Representative Jack Brooks of Texas said. “We’ve replaced comity and compassion with hatred and malice.” But Republicans were impressed. Gingrich had proven that he was more than an ideologue. He had shown that he could play politics, portraying the Democratic majority as a corrupt establishment in ways that echoed Watergate. The day after Wright’s resignation, Gingrich received a standing ovation from his GOP colleagues on the House floor.24
Much as Gingrich used the new media of C-SPAN to attack House Democrats, other conservatives made use of “talk radio” to attack liberalism writ large. The format had grown rapidly in the postwar era: In 1960, there were only two all-talk radio stations in America; by 1995, there were 1,130. The growth of talk radio was fueled, in large part, by the demise of the fairness doctrine, which ended the old requirement for balanced presentation of political issues and instead allowed sharper, more partisan hosts to dominate the airwaves. Conservatives were especially drawn to the format, accounting for some 70 percent of all listeners by 1995. By then, the undisputed king of talk radio was Rush Limbaugh. Rout
inely proclaiming himself “America’s most-listened-to talk show host,” Limbaugh reached an audience of 20 million Americans on 659 radio stations, as well as through a syndicated television program on 225 stations and several best-selling books too. With constant attacks on “commie-libs,” “feminazis,” and “environmentalist wackos,” Limbaugh quickly cultivated a loyal audience of self-styled “Dittoheads” who proudly took their political cues from him. “What Rush realizes, and what a lot of listeners don’t,” an Atlanta station manager enthused, “is that talk-radio programming is entertainment, it is not journalism.” 25
Despite his persona as an entertainer, Limbaugh’s sway with conservative listeners quickly made him a powerful force on the political right. During the 1992 presidential campaign, President George H. W. Bush courted him in hopes of winning over his right-wing listeners. In June, the president had Limbaugh to the White House for an overnight stay in the Lincoln Bedroom. In a telling detail—one that Limbaugh repeatedly stressed when retelling the story of his visit—Bush insisted on carrying Limbaugh’s bag into the White House. The host’s previously lukewarm coverage of the administration turned more enthusiastic. In September, Republicans convinced Limbaugh to break his “no-guests” rule for the show with interviews with President Bush and Vice President Quayle. Though the GOP lost the White House, Limbaugh saw a silver lining in Clinton’s election. “I think it’s a boon for me,” he said, noting that a Democratic administration would give him even greater targets. “I think Rush Limbaugh represents the views of millions of Americans,” noted Bush’s media advisor Roger Ailes, “and it would be stupid of the Clinton administration to ignore that.” Even Ronald Reagan anointed Limbaugh as his effective heir, telling him in a letter that he was now “the Number One voice for conservatism in our Country.” 26
Indeed, Rush Limbaugh quickly emerged as a chief critic of the Clinton White House. With daily coverage of the administration titled “America’s Hostage Crisis”—in which he claimed the whole country had been taken hostage—he denounced Democratic policies as “the Raw Deal.” Limbaugh’s constant criticism of Clinton had a personal, often vicious, edge to it. Once, he joked about the “White House dog” on his syndicated television show and held up a picture of the president’s 13-year-old daughter, Chelsea. But such brutal attacks on the Clintons only increased Limbaugh’s appeal. In September 1993, National Review ran a cover story on him, titled “Leader of the Opposition.” The conservative magazine speculated that Limbaugh might emerge as a Republican presidential candidate, but he remained content to work on behalf of others. Gingrich became a staunch ally, feeding Limbaugh information by fax that the radio host then spread to listeners on the air. The 1994 midterms, Limbaugh asserted, would be nothing less than “Operation Restore Democracy.” 27
To the delight of Limbaugh and his listeners, the Republicans found their way back to control of the House that year. Newt Gingrich brought together all the tools and arguments that he had been making since the early 1980s in a powerful attack on congressional Democrats and Clinton. In public, Gingrich rallied Republican candidates around what he called the Contract with America. The slick ten-point program called for, among other things, a balanced budget amendment, a line-item veto for the president, welfare rollbacks, more money for defense, term limits, stringent measures for crime control, and a 50 percent reduction in the capital gains tax. In an important touch, the more contentious social issues from the culture wars, like school prayer and abortion, were left out of the contract to avoid controversy. In private, however, Gingrich advised Republican candidates to focus not on these positive policies but on negative attacks against their opponents. Circulating a Frank Luntz memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” he advised Republicans to use a focus-group-tested list of negative words to describe their Democratic opponents. They should call them “sick” and “destructive,” say that they “lie” and “threaten” America, claim they were engaged in “greed” and “hypocrisy,” and even directly call them “traitors.” The sharp attacks were tailor-made for the Limbaugh era and resonated well with voters.28
In the end, the Republicans won a huge victory that year. They picked up eight seats in the Senate and fifty-four in the House, giving the party control of both houses of Congress with solid majorities. As the incoming Speaker of the House, Gingrich noted frankly that the conservative counterrevolution had depended on blurring lines between partisan politics and the new media. “Without C-SPAN, without talk radio shows, without all the alternative media, I don’t think we would have won,” he reflected. “The classic elite media would have distorted our message.” A month after the election, Gingrich welcomed Limbaugh to a gathering of the incoming class of Republican freshmen hosted by the Heritage Foundation. The talk radio host, he noted, would be considered an “honorary member” of the House Republicans. “Rush is responsible for what happened here as much as anyone,” enthused Vin Weber, a former congressman who then worked at a conservative think tank. A poll conducted by Frank Luntz, he noted, showed that people who listened to talk radio for more than ten hours a week had voted Republican by a margin of 3 to 1. “Those are the people who elected the new Congress.” 29
Flush with victory, Speaker Gingrich told reporters that Clinton would be “very, very dumb” to oppose the conservative agenda. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas would soon “control every [executive] appointment,” he noted, while the GOP House would control appropriations. Still combative, Gingrich sarcastically informed reporters that he would no longer call President Clinton an enemy of “normal” Americans; instead he would denounce him as an enemy of “middle-class Americans.” “I was once told to my shock that the use of the word normal is politically incorrect—a sign of how far the culture has eroded.” 30
Triangulation
For his part, President Clinton seemed deeply shaken by the 1994 elections. Even though he was not on the ballot, the midterms had seemed to all sides a referendum on his administration, one with decidedly negative results. “Exit polls showed that one third of all voters acted as they did because they disapproved of the President,” the New York Times noted. “The polls were not specific, but something about Mr. Clinton . . . has clearly nettled many voters to the point of distraction.” Searching for a way to remain “relevant” in American politics, the president turned to political consultant Dick Morris, who urged Clinton to follow a policy he called “triangulation.” He told Clinton to establish a position for himself that would be distinct from both the liberals of his own party and the conservative Republicans in Congress. Throughout 1995 and 1996, Clinton did precisely this. In essence, he made strong efforts to steal the Republicans’ thunder in two key places—on the conservative social issues of the culture wars, and on the continued push for the Reagan Revolution’s crusade against the Great Society.31
To address the conservative complaints on social issues, Clinton initiated some moderate measures of his own but, just as significantly, acquiesced to conservatives’ own efforts. Little more than a month after the midterms, he proposed a “middle-class bill of rights” which included some small if symbolic stances on moderate social issues. In a nod to conservatives’ concerns over the lack of structure and discipline in the public schools, the president endorsed mandatory public school uniforms; in a nod to worries about violence and vulgarity in the media, he pushed for the passage of the Communications Decency Act.32 He supported the use of V-Chips that allowed parents to monitor the content of their television to prevent kids from watching dangerous shows. Once installed on a family’s television, the chip, which only cost $5, would block shows rated as violent or sexual. The technology, similar to that used for closed captioning, relied on broadcasters’ transmitting rating codes explaining the content of each program.33 Clinton embraced the innovation to support families who wanted protection from “too much indiscriminate violence, too much indiscriminate sex, and too much . . . callous degradation of women and sometimes of othe
r people in various parts of our media today.” 34
Though Clinton advanced such measures on his own, the bulk of his support for conservative social issues came in his acquiescence to acts of Congress. The most significant change of the decade came on the contested issue of same-sex marriage. In 1996, social conservatives pushed through a landmark piece of legislation. In keeping with their view that same-sex marriage was an assault on marriage itself, they christened the law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia, the chief sponsor of DOMA, declared on the floor of Congress that same-sex marriage threatened straight marriage and, therefore, all of society. As he put it, “the flames of hedonism, the flames of narcissism, the flames of self-centered morality are licking at the very foundations of our society, the family unit.” At heart, DOMA did two things. First, it allowed states the right not to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Second, it established a legal definition of marriage as purely heterosexual, as a “union between one man and one woman.” In a sign of how politically toxic the issue of same-sex marriage was at the time, DOMA passed quickly and by overwhelming numbers. It won in the House by a margin of 342 to 67, and in the Senate by a margin of 85 to 14. President Clinton signed it into law in a midnight ceremony meant to minimize media attention.35
At the same time, Clinton made significant moves to reinvent himself as a Reagan-like opponent of Great Society programs. Like Reagan, Clinton did this both in rhetoric and reality. Most famously, in his State of the Union Address in January 1996, Clinton insisted—twice, for good measure—that “the era of big government is over.” In terms of actual policy, meanwhile, he pressed two initiatives. First, he took on affirmative action. In a July 1995 speech, Clinton announced that he wanted to “reaffirm the principle of affirmative action and fix the practices. We should have a simple slogan: Mend it, but don’t end it.” Practically speaking, he issued an executive order to all federal departments, requiring them to make sure no quotas were in place, and that no “reverse discrimination” was occurring on their watch. Moreover, Clinton took on welfare itself. In the 1992 campaign, he’d promised to “end welfare as we know it.” He dragged his feet, but Republicans revived the issue and forced his hand. The end result was another piece of legislation with a telling name, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which essentially finished the attack that Reagan had made on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) programs. The new law forced families off the welfare rolls by cutting off their benefits after two years, limiting their lifetime benefits to five years, and allowing people without children to receive food stamps for just three months in any three-year period.36
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