The resurrection of Bill Clinton
TODAY, as the Bush-Cheney administration winds down amid military failure, domestic scandal, and the worst-ever presidential polls, Bill Clinton -- who began his presidency the other way around -- basks in post-presidential glory: so much so that he has been standing alongside his wife in her bid in Iowa for the presidential nomination.
It may be instructive, then, to look at the Clintons' first term in the White House, from 1992 to 1996 -- a term that ended when Clinton trounced Republican Bob Dole and became the first Democrat to win the White House twice since FDR.
How was such a feat possible? Half-way through that first term, there was a midterm election meltdown, in which both chambers of Congress were lost by the Democrats. November 1994 was Newt Gingrich's hour: heading up the rise of the Vulcans. The president was depicted as a lame duck, dismissed even by members of his own party as a "transitional" figure?
How Clinton pulled himself -- and the country -- together in the aftermath of the 1994 meltdown is surely one of the great turnabouts in modern American political history. From his performance over the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in to the imposition of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended civil war in Bosnia; from the refusal to buckle over Gingrich's shutdown of the federal government to the tackling of the spiraling national deficit, Clinton reshaped his presidency in two short years to the verge of greatness -- raising America's stature abroad to the highest levels it has ever reached and unifying the country at home.
In researching for a book on Clinton, I wanted to discover who had truly been responsible. Was it the employment of the precursor to Karl Rove, the Republican pollster Dick Morris? Was it the setting up of a more effective White House spin machine, under Mike McCurry? How can historians explain the metamorphosis of a lame duck president into a triumphant chief executive and commander-in-chief, who brought peace to Southern Europe, kept Saddam Hussein in line, expanded NATO, supported Boris Yeltsin's transformation of the Russian Federation, steered the American economy into the longest sustained boom in its history -- and became the embodiment across the world of the "good American"?
One word: discipline.
Clinton's bipartisan vision of America in the modern world was broadly supported by the American people -- but his inability to prepare himself to assume the mantle and responsibility of the presidency in November 1992 doomed his presidency to a disastrous start. Hillary Rodham Clinton, unfortunately, added to this failure by imagining that, as an unelected "co-president," she could provide the missing steel in her husband's backbone. Without an effective chief of staff they bumbled from one misstep (Zoë Baird, gays in the military, Travelgate, Somalia, Troopergate, Bosnia, health care reform) to another like a rudderless ship, to the point where Republicans only had to morph Clinton's image onto a local Democrat's face to win an historic congressional victory.
So what saved Clinton?
The turning point, I believe, was Clinton's visit to Europe in the summer of 1994 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Aboard Air Force One, Clinton spoke with Leon Panetta, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, who had shepherded his great deficit-tackling economic bill successfully through Congress. As one of Clinton's key economic team members told me, there was widespread concern in the administration at the lack of order and prioritization in the White House. "There are three presidents," was the feeling -- "and two of them know what they want to do! The three being Bill, Al [Gore], and Hillary. Al had his agenda. And Hillary had her agenda. And Bill had every agenda!"
The president asked Panetta what was wrong, and was told in no uncertain terms about the lack of order in the White House.
Clinton subsequently asked Panetta to replace his nice but disastrous chief of staff, Mack McLarty. When Panetta resisted, saying he felt he was doing a vital job at OMB in taming the national deficit, Clinton uttered the immortal words that would transform his presidency: "Leon, you know, you can be the greatest OMB director in history. But if the White House is falling apart, nobody's going to remember you."
Panetta replaced McLarty for the rest of Clinton's first term -- and the rest is history. To be a great leader, a modern president must have a great chief of staff -- and in Leon Panetta, Clinton got the enforcer he deserved.
Hillary was able to withdraw into the wings as first lady, the vice president was able to do his job -- and the 42 d president was able to carry out his historic economic and peacemaking role to the utmost of his ability.
As the Clintons mount the Iowan platform, you can see, if you look carefully, that it isn't James Carville's "the economy, stupid " that is guiding their effort, but Leon Panetta's D for Discipline.
Nigel Hamilton is a fellow of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and author of "Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency," which was published this week. 
