Politics, Where No Doesn't Mean No

The Senate's approval of President Clinton's deficit reduction plan last week sure looked like a close shave: a 49-49 tie with Vice President Al Gore '69 casting the deciding vote. It doesn't get much closer than that.

But if you look closely, the shave left quite a bit of stubble. The buzz in Washington revealed that the Clinton administration, if pressed, could have counted on at least five or so more votes. A number of Democratic senators decided, once the plan's approval was sure, to cast a no vote.

This group of senators, most of whom face tough re-election battles in 1994, decided that a perfunctory and moot "no" vote afforded some sort of political innoculation against the tax allergy of wrathful voters. The Clinton administration, aware of these legislators' tenuous election prospects, "let them off the hook."

Though such posturing may now be commonplace in American politics, the spectacle of a group of legislators voting "no" on a measure that they wouldn't veto if they had the power to do so still raises questions. What were they thinking?

It is not inconceivable that they had serious misgivings about the plan's heavy reliance on taxes and loose calculations of spending cuts; yet they felt that some deficit reduction, through dubious (and perhaps deleterious) methods, is better than no deficit reduction and continued gridlock.

Since their support was tepid at best, they wanted some way to defend themselves from charges that they bought into a flawed plan, some way to differentiate themselves from Senators who were wholeheartedly for it.

It is true that there is really no simple way for a senator to cast a qualified "yes" vote. Yea can mean anything from vehement support to resigned assent, and politicians can be sure that their opponents will do their best ot impute the least popular meaning to it.

In the end a politician does vote up or down on a measure; but a simple yes-or-no, in this case on Clinton's massive deficit reduction package, does not capture what concessions a particular lawmaker wrung with his or her vote, what misgivings he or she expressed, and so on.

This quandary speaks to the oversimplification of political discourse. The problem is that it is just too easy to thrash an opponent with specious voting record arguments. "Senator X voted for the second largest tax increase in American history," is a devastating, if unsubtle, sound bite for a 30-second commercial.

Doubtless, visions of that commercial danced through the heads of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D.N.J.) and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.)--both of whom witnessed governors badly bruised by anti-tax backlash.

In Lautenberg's case, his fellow New Jersey senator, Bill Bradley, nearly lost his re-election campaign because fellow Democrat Gov. Jim Florio raised state taxes.

This line of argument is particularly sinister, because it seems legitimate--it's not a blatant smear, or an all-out attempt at character assassination. Rather, it's a criticism of the most substantive realm of the politician, how he or she votes.

If these senators had it in mind to express qualified assent with their moot no votes, then they will have succeeded in defending themselves against charges that they were vehement supporters of an unpopular measure.

Yet, interestingly enough, they will have forfeited the opportunity to pander to their constituents in another, more tangible way.

Many Washington observers have noted that the Clinton administration could have "bought" at least a half-dozen more votes, had it been necessary. This "buying" would have been in that universal political currency: pork. Senator Lautenberg, for example, lamely explained his opposition to the package by claiming that he had examined it and found that his constituents in New Jersey would end up giving a lot more than they got.

If Lautenberg was dealing in such zero-sum calculus on behalf of his constituents, he would have exacted some financial concessions for his state in exchange for a yes vote. Lautenberg, it seems, used a different sort of calculus, figuring that his political stock would fall more as the result of a yes vote than it would rise from bringing home the bacon, so to speak. In this case, defensive pandering won out over its offensive analog.

But perhaps asserting that these Democratic defectors were only trying to differentiate themselves from the die-hard supporters of the deficit-reduction package is to give them too much credit.

Maybe at heart, they believed that the Clinton plan attacks the problem of the deficit head-on, and though it demands some unpopular sacrifices, it is at bottom a necessary step.

However, demanding sacrifice is so politically harmful that these senators bit their lips until they knew the measure had passed and then voted no as a hedge against the plan's possible failure and the inevitable voter dissatisfaction it would provoke.

Though the "no" votes of the dissident Democratic senators did not defeat the bill, one cannot underestimate the importance of a strong mandate.

A 49-49 tie broken by the vice president is hardly a resounding endorsement. The Clinton bill will be weaker as it goes into House-Senate conference this week.

Future Congresses will be more likely to beat a hasty retreat at the first sign of voter discontent with the package because it did not enjoy universal support from the Democratic party.

But this tactic says something even worse about the stock that these senators put in the intelligence of the American electorate. They honestly think that voters are too dumb to see through the base political motivation for their vote.

They believe that the American people are crass enough to hold their leaders accountable for their legislative action, yet not for inaction.

Hopefully, these same voters will prove the senators wrong and give them a just reward for their cynical "no" votes--by voting "no" to their re-election.

Benjamin J. Heller, who knows that no should mean no, is working this summer at CBS News' "Street Stories."