Republicans play softball - legislators' reactions to Bill Clinton's policies and decisions - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 8, 1993 | by Wesley Pruden

Mean Bob Dole is finally too kind and gentle for the New York Times. Sen. Trent Lott is such a thoroughly nice pussycat that those macho tigers at the New Republic turn away in bemused contempt. Jack Kemp, who got publicly steamed at some of the mildly astringent Hillary Clinton jokes at the American Spectator anniversary dinner, is going steady with Henry Cisneros, his successor as secretary of the housing ministry.

The Grand Old Party has suddenly become the Groggy Old Party, all soft and fuzzy, signifying not very much. You can read about it in the papers.

George Bush is Mr. Nicest Guy of All. "It's like they've been dating or something," senior Bush aide says. "He's been glorious to Clinton'"

Ty Cobb, or maybe it was Leo Durocher or a loser, America, said it first and best: "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

This has always been the chief operating principle of the Republicans, with the occasional lapse of front-parlor propriety that explains how such recycled Democrats as Ike and the Gipper could make it to the White House. In the wake of the debacle of 1992, there are signs that the Republicans may retire from national politics for something less robust than the game of breaking heads lest your own gets broken first.

Like the girl who can't say no, Bush in his final weeks became the man who couldn't say yes. Some of the real men in his White House -- there were a few -- suggested constructive things Bush could do in the few days he had left. He could have limited by executive order some of the unbelievable regulations tied to the Clean Air Act, regulations that might gag even Al Gore, and he could have made several recess appointments (those made between Congresses, and so exempt from Senate confirmation) to boards and panels.

These were not suggestions to lay mines in the White House driveway. But Bush, egged on by James Baker, the man who deserves all the credit for putting together the 1992 Republican campaign, said no, because some of the Clinton people objected. The concern was said to be Bush's "place in history," just the sort of concern that made him history four years before his time. The puzzle is why Bush listened to the very nebbishes who bought him an early one-way ticket to Texas.

The greater puzzle is why congressional Republicans have gone in the tank with the enthusiasm of a punched-out boxer trying to get a place at the bottom of the card for the Friday night fights in Pensacola. Lott, of Mississippi, supposedly in charge of the Re publican "examination" of Bill Clinton's Cabinet nominations, is missing in action, apparently sunning himself on the beach at Biloxi.

"Unless we find a smoking gun, we'd have to get eight or 10 Southern Democrats to vote with us in the first week of the new administration [to defeat a nominee such as Donna Shalala];" says Lott. "What are the chances of that?"

Not much, with a positive attitude like that.

Sen. Dole, who in the wreckage of the morning after promised to chaperon the Clinton honeymoon with Congress, seems to have applied instead for the position of eunuch of the harem.

Sheila Burke, his chief of staff, told her colleagues before the inauguration that Republicans would not needlessly obstruct the new administration and would, in fact, "cooperate sometimes."

If this is bad news for the 57 percent who didn't vote for Clinton, it's good news for the 43 percent who did, and good news most of all for Clinton himself. The new president is the child of an early family of Arkansas, a descendant of men who were, in the words of one insightful chronicler of those robust early days, "half b'ar and half alligator, who ate barbed wire for breakfast and whipped 40 acres of wildcats before noon, men who venerated the razorback boar as the meanest beast in the bottoms." A dinner of timid Republicans won't even reward the new president with a burp.

The Democrats on the Hill, anticipating a feast of Republican blubber, are already calling their man Sleek Willie. Who can blame them?