Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
From gun curbs to tax cuts, President Clinton seeks a legacy in his last, long-winded State of the Union address.
Jan 28, 2000 | It was an event filled with the sort of landmarks the TV wags love to point out: President Clinton's eighth and final State of the Union address. He is the first to give the speech after having been impeached, and "only the third president to serve two terms in the last 50 years," as Sam Donaldson unhelpfully noted. It was his longest yet. It was oddly the first time the entire Supreme Court was absent from the annual gathering. And it was probably the first time anybody had seen Donna Shalala's tousled new haircut.
More importantly, it was the first time Clinton had to deal with the fact that the country, collectively, wasn't just looking at him, but past him -- literally, over his right shoulder to his vice president and would-be successor, Al Gore. So the narcissist in chief responded like a toddler realizing that his younger brother is suddenly drawing all the attention. He talked more. He got louder. And he made the tricks bigger.
In the process, he did the little brother a big favor. The president's speech -- highlighted by a proposed $350 billion tax cut -- had the feel of a victory celebration, where there's enough of everything to go around -- enough money, enough food, enough love -- that even the No. 2 guy will go home happy. (And as the significance-starved TV wags would note later, Clinton mentioned Gore six -- Count 'em! Six! -- different times.)
The president was especially generous to his and Gore's choice constituency: baby boomers. Two-income families could celebrate (he promised to reduce the marriage penalty), especially if they have kids going to college (major college tuition tax breaks). And if they also fall into a lower-income bracket (increased insurance eligibility), have younger children who need extra help while in school (a $1 billion after school program), or preschoolers (a $1 billion expansion of the Head Start program), they got more goodies. To complete the PTA-friendly package, Clinton promised more competitive charter schools, ambitious teacher training programs and upgrading the number of schools with Internet access.
Also central to his proposal is a $110 billion plan over 10 years to expand health-care coverage, along with a series of other related health proposals that include $3,000 tax credits for long-term care, $1 billion in tax credits to encourage the development of vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS or HIV, and the ever-popular patients bill of rights.
The big laugh of the night might also have been the most illuminating. Twice, within about 40 seconds, Clinton told of the need "to make our communities more liberal" -- instead of livable. It was less ironic than honest, however inadvertently: His embrace of big, imaginative, taxpayer-funded programs, along with an unapologetic promotion of social programs -- tougher gun control laws, a higher minimum wage, the Paycheck Fairness Act for women, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty -- seemed to intentionally and aggressively embrace the "L" word, arguably for the first time since his health-care proposal was laughed down in 1993.
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