Although it was partly obscured by the uproar over his attorney general nominee, President Clinton in his first days in office actually did begin to carry out what he had promised: a fundamental shift in the role that the American government will play at home and abroad and the values it will seek to encourage.
While trying to quell the political damage from the retreat on Zoe Baird's nomination, Clinton was also signing a series of executive orders and ordering up a series of foreign policy reviews, which are expected not only to alter 12 years of Republican policies but also to inaugurate a new era of government action."What got lost in the controversy over Zoe Baird was that Clinton was initiating a radical change in the way that the president and the executive branch will approach public policy," said Michael Beschloss, a historian of the presidency. "This is as sharp and genuine a change as Franklin Roose-velt's takeover from Herbert Hoover in 1933, or Ronald Reagan's takeover from Jimmy Carter in 1981 - from a passive presidency to an activist one, and from one ideology to another."
It is too early to predict how effectively Clinton will sustain what he has started, Beschloss said. And his biggest promises on providing more jobs and affordable health care will be far harder to deliver.
But nevertheless, with the stroke of a presidential pen this past week Clinton took these actions:
- Lifted restrictions imposed by Presidents George Bush and Ronald Reagan on abortion counseling at federally financed clinics, on the right to perform abortions at American military hospitals overseas and on the use of fetal tissue in federally sponsored research.
- Lifted the restrictions on extending American financial aid to U.N. programs sponsoring family planning and population control - a move that will have a far-reaching impact on countries from China to India to Egypt, which have been short of money for such programs.
- Imposed new ethics guidelines that will bar senior government officials from lobbying the federal agency in which they work for five years after leaving the government - a move that should inhibit people from seeking government jobs in the hopes of being able to cash in once out of office. The old limit was one year.
- Moved ahead with plans to repeal the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces, despite intense opposition by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- Abolished the Bush administration's Council on Competitiveness, which gave businesses and large corporations a way to obtain exemptions from government regulations.
- Before Congress recesses in early February, Clinton plans to introduce a new family leave bill, like the one Bush vetoed, that would require employers to grant workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid family and medical leave, with continued health-insurance coverage. He also plans to introduce a bill that would require states to allow eligible citizens to register to vote when they obtain or renew their driver, fishing or hunting licenses.
- Ordered his aides to review the Bush administration policy toward Bosnia - with an eye to taking a much more active approach toward inhibiting Serbian attacks if the current peace talks in Geneva fall apart. Such steps could include lifting the American arms embargo on Bosnia, selective American air strikes against Serb gunners and war crimes tribunals against Serbian leaders.
In a sharp departure from the Bush administration, Clinton has told aides that he will not tolerate an American policy on Serbia based purely on how it affects the global balance of power.
As he said in an interview on the eve of his inauguration: "Somehow the West has got to say something and do something about the idea of `ethnic cleansing,' which is such an embracing idea that if you believe in it, it justifies the brutalization of women who are not your women and children who are not your children."
When Ronald Reagan came to office in 1980 he, too, ushered in an ideological changing of the guard, but it was different, and in some ways much simpler, than Clinton's.
Reagan brought conservative values on issues from the family to abortion to taxes, but his general view of government was that it should be scaled back, that it was part of the problem, not an instrument for solutions.
Clinton brings not only liberal values on issues from family to abortion to taxes, but a general view of government that is active, not passive.