Republican Victory

Never have less than half of less than half of all registered voters managed to elect a President--but that's exactly what happened when Bill Clinton was re-elected. After spending unprecedented amounts of money for his re-election bid, conducting one of the most effective modern campaigns in memory and running against a discombobulated, disorganized and weak Dole campaign, Bill Clinton only managed to capture 49 percent of the vote to Bob Dole's 42 percent. After launching an unsuccessful bid to take over Congress with the help of Big Labor, Bill Clinton finds himself with a House of Representatives that has only two fewer Republican members than it had after the 1994 election and a Senate that has two more Republican members than it did before the election. Knowing this, it is little wonder that the White House has not wasted its time or its breath on the standard blather about a Presidential mandate that usually follows a successful re-election campaign--they know, as we all know, that this election was not a mandate for Bill Clinton or the Democratic Party.

So what was this election a mandate for? Put simply, this election delivered the message that Americans wanted incremental, bi-partisan conservative yet compassionate change. Liberalism has long been dead in American politics. Today, only 16 percent of Americans consider themselves liberals as opposed to 40 percent who consider themselves conservative and 40 percent who consider themselves moderate. Bill Clinton knew as much. For this reason, he ran toward the right of center in order to win re-election. In this sense, his re-election has only served to underscore that the days of White House liberalism are over. Americans kept the Republican Congress in part because a majority of them viewed a potential Democratic Congress with Dick Gephardt in the Speaker's chair as too liberal. Also, for the first time, polls have shown that a majority of Americans want government to do less, not more. All told, Americans want to shrink the size of government.

But does this mean that Americans were enchanted with Republican conservatism in all its forms? Not at all. While the electorate displayed its conservative tendencies, it also made very clear over the course of the past election cycle that it desired a compassionate conservatism. While Americans wanted smaller government, they still wanted that government to have a heart and to empathize with them. (Hence, the oft ridiculed yet highly effective Clintonian mantra, "I feel your pain.") President Clinton was very successful in painting the GOP as a party that didn't care about children, minorities, women and the elderly--a party that didn't care for all Americans. Some in the Republican Party would like to point out that Bill Clinton played fast and loose with the truth and unfairly got away with unfair charges regarding Medicare and Social Security. And while they are right, and while the Republican Party is not the uncaring beast that President Clinton tried to make it out to be, it is clear that a party that does not paint the picture of a bright alternative that includes all Americans will not hold its majority for long. Ronald Reagan understood this and portrayed an America on the verge of great things, an America with room for all. Unfortunately, the Republican Party lost the promise of Reagan's America along the way and has come to put on a harsher face. If we Republicans are ever to control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, we must learn to communicate that we are the party of optimism and that we truly care about the plight of children in the inner cities, the poor who work but can't seem to get ahead and the single mothers working two jobs to make ends meet.

True enough, Bill Clinton misrepresented our record in the last election. But he could not have succeeded in making the GOP look so callous if we had not made it so easy for him. We must work hard to reach out to women, to immigrants, to minorities and to children--not because they will allow us to win elections, but because they are the people who make up America and they are the people who need a place at our national table and a voice in our national politics.

Moreover, we Republicans must work with Democrats to begin to bring about incremental change for our country. As we have seen with the health care bill and with the tragic christening of the "Republican Revolution," the American people are wary of change that comes too fast. We must ease the nation into the changes that will make life better for Americans.

Finally, the American people want the political parties to quit the petty fights and to lead for a change. They do not want to see one party steamroll the other as the Democrats tried to do in the early Clinton years or the Gingrich Republicans tried to do in the last two years. They want to see cooperation and people working together for the good of the country--not for improvement in the next Gallup poll's numbers.

All in all, the Republican Party won itself a sort of vindication this past election day. It overcame a weak Presidential campaign and a lavishly dishonest opposition campaign to hold on to the House of Representatives and the governorships of the states while increasing its majority in the Senate. But, hopefully, the party will look beyond its election successes and understand the constructive criticism that was the message of this election. Hopefully, the party will make the adjustments that the American people are calling for. And when it finally does so, it will have done good for itself by having done good for the country.

William D. Zerhouni '97-'98 is the president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance.