The Return of the Bully Pulpit

Bill Clinton, whose communication skills have so often been likened to those of a talk show host, emerged last week as an inspirational speaker and a powerful defender of free speech.

Throughout the tumultuous first year of his presidency, Clinton often embraced the power of the presidential pulpit to push his legislative agenda. His rousing addresses to Congress on the budget and health care are only the most prominent examples.

But until recently he had used his bully pulpit only to urge congressional action, failing to realize that presidential speech has a potency apart from its effect on Capitol Hill.

Now, with the congressional winter recess freeing him from legislative pressures, Clinton has turned the presidential podium into a source of moral guidance for the nation.

Clinton's commemoration of World AIDS Day last week is one example. After a decade in which the word "AIDS" had to struggle valiantly simply to escape the lips of Presidents Reagan and Bush, Clinton's touching speech was a welcome change and a stirring call to action.

Clinton delivered an emotional appeal to Americans, saying that "the face of AIDS is no longer the face of a stranger." Returning to an increasingly familiar theme, he advocated responsible conduct by adults and education so that children will also conduct themselves responsibly. He also maturely accepted criticism that his administration has not addressed AIDS as forcefully as he had promised.

The same moral urgency was present in inspirational speeches that Clinton delivered recently to audiences in Memphis and Los Angeles. In those speeches, he implored Americans to take responsibility for ending crime and violence in their communities.

This theme is hardly new, as Jesse Jackson and other black leaders in communities nationwide will affirm. But no one else has the president's power to draw public attention to an issue. Local concerns develop national importance when the president takes a serious interest in them, and Clinton's interest in ending urban violence appears serious indeed.

He even brought this interest to Hollywood's home turf on Saturday. Speaking to movie executives, he implored filmmakers to portray violence responsibly, and to consider the impact of violent movies on children who are unaware of the consequences of their actions.

Clinton's speech signalled that Hollywood is not exempt from the president's call to act responsibly and curb violence.

But the speech was important for another reason: It avoided the frighteningly anti-free speech rhetoric that liberals from Illinois Senator Paul Simon to popular Attorney General Janet Reno have employed recently.

Clinton rejected the Big Brother approach of Simon and Reno, one not made constitutional by the mere fact of its popularity. Hollywood probably will not heed the president's plea, but the nation should take notice of his emphasis.

Clinton's words shift the debate from a reliance on government action to an emphasis on individual responsibility. They recognize that the government cannot respond to every crisis by regulating its causes--particularly when the proposed regulation threatens fundamental American freedoms.

As such, Clinton's words constitute both a valuable defense of free speech and a powerful reminder that speech is a freedom that should be exercised responsibly. Had Clinton added his weight to the Reno-Simon censorship chorus, he would have contributed presidential momentum to a dangerous movement to curtail First Amendment freedoms instead of asking Americans to take responsibility for what they and their children view.

Saturday was not the only time last week that Clinton used the symbolic power of the presidency to defend free speech. Earlier, Clinton met with author Salman Rushdie, whose 1989 book The Satanic Verses earned him a death sentence from Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. President Bush had shunned such meetings, with his press secretary derisively dismissing Rushdie as just another "author promoting his book."

Clinton rejected that cynical characterization and granted Rushdie an audience with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and himself.

These meetings were, as Rushdie asserted, "a massive act of support by the American government" for an author who has endured far too much suffering for the crime of writing a book deemed blasphemous by people who probably never read it.

By using the presidency as a source of symbolic support for Rushdie, Clinton incurred the wrath of some Muslims in Iran and Egypt. Notwithstanding his timid and apologetic assurances that he "meant no disrespect" to the Muslim world, however, Clinton did the right thing.

"Part of my job is to lift the hopes and aspirations of the American people," the president said on World AIDS Day, "knowing that as long as you're trying to lift hopes and lift aspirations you can never fully close the gap between what you're reaching for and what you're actually doing..."

That statement expresses perfectly the role that Clinton has only recently chosen for himself as president. It is a role that includes shaping the national discourse, inspiring the American people and defending American values like free speech.

This is a role that Clinton's predecessor rejected, at the expense of the nation and himself. And it is a role that will enable President Clinton to emerge as a promising leader. For a man whose presidency is consistently subjected to week-by-week assessments, these have not been a bad couple of weeks.