1/25/01 11:25 a.m.
Waiting for the Fall
The media yearns for a Bush blunder.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he ink was still drying on the Supreme Court's decision delivering the presidency to George W. Bush in December when the venerable R.W. Apple, Jr., of the New York Times announced one of the major obstacles confronting the new administration: "With so little room to maneuver, Mr. Bush cannot afford to be tied, early on, to divisive secondary issues like gays in the military, which cost President Bill Clinton so much momentum at the onset of his first time."

Ever since, the media's search for Bush's gays-in-the-military debacle has been relentless. Certainly he will commit such a blunder! The order on Monday returning to the "Mexico City" policy of refusing to fund international groups that promote abortion so far has won the most comparisons to Clinton's early-term flub. Here are just two examples:

• "The president's moves on abortion distracted attention from his main policy priority this week of education reform, and recalled President Clinton's early diversion of attention on gays in the military," opined Richard Wolffe of the Financial Times.

• "Clinton stumbled into his bitter, divisive 'don't ask, don't tell' controversy over gays in the military in his first week in office. Bush pitches headlong into the abortion cauldron. You think these guys would learn," scolded David Nyhan of the Boston Globe.

But don't worry. If Bush hadn't moved ahead on abortion, he still would have had a problem that reminded people of gays in the military. In fact, he already had. Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne recently wrote, "The Bush nominations may be seen in the long run as comparable to President Clinton's early move on behalf of gays in the military." The Minneapolis Star Tribune echoed that sentiment last week: "Bush's claim to legitimacy is far more tenuous than Clinton's, yet he is repeating Clinton's mistakes. In Clinton's case it was gays in the military and his Hillary-led effort to remake the American health-care system. In Bush's case it is [John] Ashcroft and [Gale] Norton and Bush's embrace of the religious right."

Taxes might also pose a gays-in-the-military problem for Bush, according to Jack Germond and Jules Witcover of the Baltimore Sun: "More often than not, missteps in the first days put a new president in a hole he must spend an inordinate amount of time digging himself out of or creating an impression about him that he never quite shakes thereafter. Mr. Bush's no-compromise on his tax cuts could prove to be such a detriment. …[Clinton] made the tactical mistake of making his first initiative a non-discriminatory policy toward gays in the military."

And if it's not abortion, the cabinet, or taxes, surely it will be Social Security, according to the Orlando Sentinel: "Clinton ran into trouble when he began his term with health-care reform and a policy on gays in the military. That means the touchy issue of reforming Social Security likely will not be at the top of Bush's list."

If ever there was an example of the media's herd mentality, this is it. Clinton's gays-in-the-military misadventure was probably a one-of-a-kind escapade. That debate was so bruising to Clinton in part because there had been no trial run. Congress had never seriously debated ending the ban on gays in uniform, and the clueless Bush campaign of 1992 had not made an issue of Clinton's promise to end it. By contrast, official Washington has fought about overseas abortion funding for years, and last year Democrats did make an issue of W.'s expressed intentions on abortion generally. This issue isn't going to blow up.

The tangible desire for Bush to make a similar political error out of the gates is a case of both lazy analysis and a wishing-would-make-it-so anti-Republican bias. At some point in the future, Bush will stumble. It's inevitable. When somebody compares it to Clinton's gays-in-the-military mistake, however, say you've heard it all before.