But when Bill spoke about the budget in ‘95, he didn’t praise his fellow Democrats for their courage: He buried them.
“There are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much,” he said. “It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too.”
It was hardly an isolated incident.
He championed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, which was—and still is—vigorously opposed by organized labor and the Democratic base. But Bill muscled it through Congress on the strength of Republican support. To many Democrats, it was betrayal. But to him, it was a political boon—another “Sister Souljah” moment that allowed him to show independent voters he was different from the old Democratic guard they’d come to so dislike.
So was welfare reform, which reached his desk at the height of his 1996 reelection campaign. In truth, welfare rolls were already shrinking, thanks to an improving economy and reform efforts undertaken at the state level. But polls showed voters still believed the system was counterproductive and rife with abuse, and Bill Clinton signed it—over the cries of some in his party that it senselessly punished children.
“It is a social risk that no sane person would take, and I mean that,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan said at the time.
There was also the ordeal of impeachment. Democratic voters may remember it as a heroic struggle against an out-of-control Republican inquisition, but many party leaders remember the missed opportunities: A full year of Bill’s presidency wasted defending himself from an inquiry that—no matter how outrageous—was ultimately the result of his immaturity and lack of self-control.
To Bill Clinton, members of the party establishment realized, they weren’t allies as much as they were foils.
In one moment of candor 13 years ago, Congressman David Obey vented his frustration: “I think most of us learned some time ago that if you don’t like the president’s position on a particular issue, you simply need to wait a few weeks.”
Obey will be a superdelegate at this year’s convention. He is backing Obama.
