Can't Win for Losing

http://www.jannswenner.com/Archives/Bill_Clinton2.aspx

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CLINTON:
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If you put a bill out there, in detail, you know you’ll have to change it, because that’s part of the process. And then your friends, who’d like it just the way it is, will attack you for changing it. That is what a democracy is all about – working through and getting one more vote than half, in whatever climate you’re in, to move the ball forward.

I have taken on issues that other presidents, Democrats and Republicans, have never even thought about taking on. But presidents are not dictators.
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GREIDER:
Did you underappreciate the power of the status quo lobbies?

CLINTON:
Yeah. A little bit.

GREIDER:
Can you give us an example?

CLINTON:
Here’s the sort of how-you-can’t-win-for-losing thing. On the stimulus package, the jobs bill, I thought it was so important to have a good one, so we hung tough and didn’t compromise. And we didn’t get anything. Nobody can say that the president didn’t hang tough, but what do I have to show for it?

GREIDER:
I think you should propose it again

CLINTON:
And were Bob Dole and the Republicans hurt by killing it? No. Did the press attempt to hurt them for killing it? No. They rewarded them for winning, instead of punishing them for keeping a half-million people out of work.

WENNER:
How come you didn’t get up –

CLINTON:
So when you’re president, you can’t win for losing on a deal like that. You’ve got to make up your mind, at various times along the way, whether the cause you’re seeking to further will in fact advance with 85 percent of what you propose instead of 100 percent or whether it’s just better to go down in flames. Or whether by hanging tough, you can prevail anyway. That’s basically what we did with the final version of the budget, where still, legislators were all looking for some easy way out, as if there was some magic spending cut.

GREIDER:
On the lobbyists and interest groups –

CLINTON:
This town is more conservative than I thought. And I don’t mean conservative, right to left.

GREIDER:
Fixed?

CLINTON:
It’s more fixed. It’s more change averse – even the people who think they’re liberal Democrats. There’s a dominant culture here that is very change averse. And that has surprised me a little bit.

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