President Clinton, down after last fall's midterm elections, is beginning to show once again why it's risky to count him out.
Holding his most extensive news conference this year on Friday, the president adroitly set his course toward a "new Democrat" re-election bid, fended off ethics questions and fired well-aimed barbs at the Republicans for endangering popular programs.And all the while, he was scolding his would-be challengers for starting the 1996 presidential race too early. "We've got to stop all this - it's March of 1995," he protested.
That didn't stop him from letting loose with some of his own partisan offensives. "The Republicans now have proposed to cut education, nutritional help for mothers and schoolchildren, anti-drug efforts in our schools, and other things which to me appear to target children in order to pay for tax cuts for upper-income Americans," he said, speaking in an auditorium in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House.
With his job-approval ratings still hovering below 50 percent, Clinton is still seen as endangered. "He never really shows any consistency" in solid approval, said Republican pollster Glen Bolger whose firm Public Opinion Strategies has a new study rating the president's job approval at 43 percent.
"On the other hand, he's a long way from down and out," Bolger said.
After a long difficult spell during which a Canadian newspaper greeted him last month as a visiting "titular" president, Clinton finally has something to cheer about. His fellow Democrats on Thursday stopped the balanced budget amendment drive in the Senate.
The president had little to do with that victory. In fact, he had been urged to keep in the background lest he hurt the cause of opponents to the constitutional amendment.
Moreover, the victory was tarnished when Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell switched to the Republican Party on Friday.
But Clinton played down Campbell's defection. "I wish he hadn't done it," he said, adding that he expected Campbell to continue voting with Democrats most of the time.
What the president seized from the balanced budget fight was a favorite Democratic role - as defenders of Social Security. "I did not believe it was right for us to effect cuts in Social Security simply to reduce the deficit," he said. "I think that is wrong." Republicans had never proposed such cuts, but they refused to exempt Social Security entirely.
Clinton also continued to hammer home his assertion that he has cut the deficit by "$600 billion" over earlier expectations, although he has yet to reap much credit for that. Even with the reductions, the Clinton budget projects that $800 billion will be added to the nation's debt during the president's four-year term.
With a clear eye on the new conservative trend of the country, Clinton declared himself a "new Democrat" and pledged to take a fresh look at affirmative action - an effort to boost the hiring of racial minorities and women - which has angered many white men.
Also in his news conference, the president appeared undisturbed as a journalist read out a list of ethics probes, including the Whitewater investigation of Clinton, the resignation of Treasury deputy secretary Roger Altman, and probes of the heads of three departments: Housing, Agriculture, and Transportation.
Clinton, apparently well armed for the queries, shot back that "We live in a time now where the first thing people call for is a special counsel."
He wrote off most of the controversies, including Whitewater, as unconnected to official duties. And despite the unusual number of investigations, he argued that his ethics rules were the toughest of any previous president.