Chameleon Candidate

He worked for George McGovern's and Mike Dukakis's bids for president. He's supported tax hikes almost every year of his governorship. He's pro-choice. He's no conservative.

But Gov. Bill Clinton (D--Arkansas) is a political genius. The Georgetown-educated Rhodes Scholar has managed to get elected governor for 14 years, longer than any other current U.S. chief executive. And he's won in Arkansas, where Rhodes Scholar may as well mean you work for the Highway Department. This man knows how to win elections.

And now Clinton wants to be President. How can a little-known pol from a small state make it against a popular President? For this expert hack, the answer follows the old if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em logic. Clinton figures he has to run as a moderate. Cut spending. Support the death penalty. Talk pro-business and anti-liberal. For conservative times, this is smart. Too bad it's bullshit.

Still, Clinton performs wonderfully in this role. He recently completed two terms as head of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of "new," "moderate" Democrats whose agenda includes "new" ideas like "cutting spending," "choice" for schools and quota-free "empowerment" schemes for minorities.

A closer look at Clinton's record belies his newly discovered moderate views. In the '70s, Clinton won initial praise as a business-bashing consumer advocate-type state Attorney General. In his first term as governor, he piloted unpopular highway taxes through a hostile legislature. He commuted more death sentences than any previous governor. He had a solid environmental record.

Many of these positions and an arrogant attitude lost him the 1980 race for governor, but a more "moderate" (sound familiar?) stance won him the governor's mansion back in 1982.

Since then, Clinton has run home to his liberalism. As late as 1988 he wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times urging transportation tax hikes and greater federal control over local spending (the bane of small-government conservatives...like Bill Clinton).

Clinton will make a strong run for President. But it won't be the real Bill Clinton. It will be the '90s Democrat, the new South moderate, the chameleon for the White House. Don't be fooled.