Even as campaign finance reform is dying this year in Congress, both men are charging around the country, excoriating with one hand and collecting donations with the other. New Hampshire was just another photo op. Renaming Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan may be their most memorable achievement. Meanwhile, the country stumbles along in foreign policy because the White House and Congress can't reach agreement on an array of international commitments. So, too, is funding for the International Monetary Fund, even as it juggles a financial crisis in Asia and authority that the president needs to conduct trade negotiations around the world.
Memory fails in trying to recall a time of such legislative failures in foreign policy.
Official statistics, released in the Congressional Record, show that overall the House and Senate enacted just over half as many bills in the first six months of 1998 as in the same period in 1996 and 1994. Congress and the White House may seek to redeem themselves with passage of a patients' bill of rights this fall, but 1998 still will enter the books as a failure of leadership. Politicians in both parties feel they can get away with it because voters are so buoyed by the economy. Never mind that our economic dynamism comes from people working feverishly hard in the private sector, not from those at the public trough, and that the economic boom, not Washington, deserves most of the credit for today's budget surpluses. Even so, the politicians think they can ride the crest of good times to their own re-election.