The Vision Thing

Quietly and without warning, while Americans concentrated on the horserace politics surrounding the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Clinton ducked into a Memphis Church and became presidential.

The press had not been told to expect a major address on Saturday, November 13, National attention was focused on Al Gore's humbling of Ross Perot, and on speculation about whether the White House could write enough protections for sugar and corn and cucumbers into NAFTA to win passage of the free trade agreement without sacrificing the principle of free trade.

But while America was counting votes and taking polls, Bill Clinton snuck away and came closer than he ever had before to grasping the mantle of his political patron saint, John F. Kennedy. Standing at the pulpit from which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon, Clinton spoke courageously and passionately about the crime and violence that plague America's black urban youth.

What made Clinton's speech so significant to his presidency was not the topic. He has spoken about crime before, and this week he won congressional approval of important anti-crime legislation. He has even been astute enough to tie the costs of violence to the need for health care reform.

But the significance of Clinton's Memphis speech lies in his formulation of the issue: For once, he did not approach crime as a mere policy problem, as an issue for theorists and academics to consider and solve. Instead, he echoed Jesse Jackson and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking movingly of "the great crisis of the spirit that is gripping America today." And he acknowledged that government programs alone could not solve America's crime problem.

Federal policies help, he said, but they are no substitute for personal responsibility and community action. There are changes the government can make to alleviate the causes and effects of urban violence, the President said. "And then," he added, "there are some changes we're going to have to make from the inside out, or the others won't matter."

President Clinton's words were extremely encouraging to the ministers in his audience in Memphis, who have been saying the same thing for years. And they were encouraging to a nation that has experienced a disheartening void in moral leadership from the White House since John Kennedy's assassination 30 years ago this week.

So long after JFK's death, the memories of the man and the myth of Camelot remain ripe in the American psyche. But most Americans would be hard-pressed to list Kennedy's top legislative accomplishments. Aside from the Peace Corps, the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy is not remembered for the substantive achievements of his presidency.

America's lasting nostalgia for JFK has little to do with his programmatic agenda. Instead, it is--as your parents will attest--a longing for the way he made America feel.

Bill Clinton, whose political baptism was a 1963 handshake with Kennedy, has so far failed to revive Camelot precisely because he has been unable to inspire Americans in the way that JFK did. He has invoked the Kennedy legacy through policy proposals (the National Service Act--a domestic Peace Corps), lofty ambiguities (the New Covenant--a Southern Baptist's New Frontier), and a series of staged events (Maya Angelo's inaugural poem a la Robert Frost, a Rose Garden reception for Boys' Nation 30 years--to the day--after Clinton's encounter with Kennedy).

But until November 13, Clinton apparently failed to recognize the need for a moral vision to bind together the disparate components of his legislative agenda. Until November 13, he seemed to have forgotten that George Bush's downfall was the result of his deficient vision, or "the vision thing," as the former President phrased it.

True, public opinion soured on Bush because he failed to respond to the national sense of economic insecurity. But Clinton was wrong to think that programs alone would constitute an adequate response. What America seeks, and what Bush failed to deliver, is a sense of principle and possibility--a sense that the nation can go some where, and that the President can lead it there. This is the hope that Kennedy and his New Frontier offered.

Bill Clinton, the man from Hope, Arkansas, came into office promising to reignite America's sense of possibility and rededicate the nation to the principles of community, responsibility and security. But he quickly became distracted by politics and policies and forgot about principles.

He tried to recreate the Kennedy-era enthusiasm for public service by pushing through Congress a national service program. But JFK inspired American to perform service ("Ask what you can do for your country") and then provided a vehicle for that service in the form of the Peace Corps. Clinton operated instead on the "if you build it they will come" assumption: Pass the program, and a national sense of community and inter-dependence will emerge.

Clinton deserves enormous credit for the scope and substance of his ambitious policy proposals, especially service and universal health care. The problem is that he has expected these policies to stand alone, rather than using them as a framework to facilitate action under a set of clearly and persuasively articulated principles.

On Saturday, November 13, though, President Clinton seemed at last to realize that a president has two avenues for influencing American life: legislative agenda-setting and aggressive use of what Teddy Roosevelt called the bully pulpit.

Since taking office, Clinton has exercised the first of these options more forcefully than any 20th century president except Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. But the Memphis speech was the first time he firmly embraced the second option and asserted his presidential role as a moral leader and a source of national inspiration in the mold of JFK.

It was the first time President Clinton assessed a problem not in terms of jobs gained and jobs lost, not in the partisan terms of change versus grid lock, not in the politically calculated terms that have become so common, but instead in terms of principle and moral urgency. After citing statistics demonstrating the disgraceful effects of urban violence of American youth, the President proclaimed, powerfully and passionately, "I tell you, it is our moral duty to turn it around."

Martin Luther King, Clinton said, "did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others."

It was a courageous and inspiring speech. What's more, Clinton appears to be transforming that speech into a personal crusade. Last Sunday he repeated the same themes in a speech to Hispanics in East Los Angeles. In Kennedyesque terms, he called on his "fellow Americans" to take control of their communities and their lives.

"We have to make up our minds that we will no longer tolerate children killing; children having guns and being better armed than police officers; neighborhoods unsafe," the president said. "We can do better".

This emerging crusade demonstrates Clinton's understanding that no other individual in the country possesses the president's ability to shape national debate and frame moral principles. It offers hope that Clinton has the heartfelt convictions that American longs for in a president. And it suggests that this country may finally have found a president with the ability and the will to revive the national sense of purpose and promise that vanished 30 years ago in Dallas.