Let’s Play Small Ball!

WHEN the Lewinsky scandal became the dominant story of the Clinton presidency in 1998, it had three effects on his agenda. First, Clinton lowered his sights. Nothing major was going to get done amid the depositions and court orders. Second, he hugged his base tight. He couldn’t afford to let the Left decide he wasn’t worth the trouble to defend. As a result of these first two effects, the sporadic talk from the Clinton White House about entitlement reformincluding a reform based on individual investment-ended.

But Clinton didn’t become a do-nothing president, either. The third effect of the scandal was to increase his determination to make the public think that he was “working hard for the American people.” Sometimes that meant making proposals that didn’t stand a chance of becoming law. Sometimes it meant issuing executive orders. And sometimes it meant starting what critics derided as “microinitiatives”-“playing small ball,” as Clinton’s successor described it.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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WHEN the Lewinsky scandal became the dominant story of the Clinton presidency in 1998, it had three effects on his agenda. First, Clinton lowered his sights. Nothing major was going to get done amid the depositions and court orders. Second, he hugged his base tight. He couldn’t afford to let the Left decide he wasn’t worth the trouble to defend. As a result of these first two effects, the sporadic talk from the Clinton White House about entitlement reformincluding a reform based on individual investment-ended.

But Clinton didn’t become a do-nothing president, either. The third effect of the scandal was to increase his determination to make the public think that he was “working hard for the American people.” Sometimes that meant making proposals that didn’t stand a chance of becoming law. Sometimes it meant issuing executive orders. And sometimes it meant starting what critics derided as “microinitiatives”-“playing small ball,” as Clinton’s successor described it.