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William Jefferson Clinton -- soft, pale, white boy out of Hope, Ark. -- likes to call himself "the first black President." That title was bestowed on Bill by celebrated author Toni Morrison in a 1998 New Yorker article in which she wrote: "Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime."
On Sept. 16, at a formal dinner in Washington, the Prez told members of the Congressional Black Caucus and their guests that "I'd rather have that [title] than the Nobel Prize." Later he massaged the gathering with this: "When they took a torch to me and lit the fire, you brought the buckets and poured the water on it, and I thank you."
Clinton's appeal to large numbers of the African-American populace may have something to do with the down-home manner this Yale-educated Rhodes Scholar cultivates. It may have something to do with his well-honed empathy. Or it may have something to do with being beaten down by the ultra-white Establishment of Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott -- and still coming out on top.
Then again, it may have something to do with public gestures like appointing Mike Espy as Agriculture Secretary, appointing Ron Brown as Commerce Secretary, appointing Alexis Herman as Labor Secretary. It may even have something to do with his celebrated friendship with Washington "power lawyer" Vernon Jordan, and his indebtedness to now-famous White House assistant Betty Currie -- both of whom helped save Bill's razorback bacon.
LOYAL TO A FAULT. And the depth of Clinton's support among African Americans has apparently been transferred from Bill to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore. Polls show support among blacks at about 84% for Gore vs. 10% for George W. And according to a Marist Poll in New York State, 95% of blacks back Hillary for U.S. Senator, vs. an astounding 0% (that's no typo) for her Republican rival, Rick "Space Invader" Lazio.
But besides presiding over an economy (i.e. getting out of Alan Greenspan's way) that lifted an awful lot of boats of every color, what has the first black President -- or Hillary and Al for that matter -- ever done for blacks?
In the early days of his Administration, Clinton bailed out on an old African-American friend and supporter, Lani Guinier, when her nomination to head the Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division came under intense fire. As Harvard Law School's Professor Randall Kennedy later pointed out, Guinier not only angered Republicans because of her left-liberal views on race but also alienated the Democratic Establishment because she had the temerity to suggest that mainstream Democrats had "taken blacks for granted."
CONTENT OF HIS CHARACTER. In the ensuing years, the President appropriated the GOP drive to end welfare, embraced it, and signed laws that eliminated benefits for millions of poor people -- many of them black.
In 1999, Clinton latched onto racial profiling as an issue he could attack and exploit with no downside. But for the previous six years, the Clinton/Gore Administration was doing more to damage the African-American community than any arrest-happy cops pulling over citizens for "driving while black." During that time, the President-who-didn't-inhale escalated the failed drug war that has led to the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of young black Americans. According to the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, in 1999 African Americans accounted for 50% of the prison population though they make up only 13% of the population at large. And because crack -- once endemic in inner cities -- is treated differently than powdered cocaine, black violators of federal drug laws are likely to receive longer mandatory minimum sentences.
In September, the Justice Dept. released the disturbing results of a review of the federal death penalty. Although there has not been a federal execution in 37 years, the death penalty is on the books, and Justice found that 75% of the cases over the past five years in which a federal prosecutor sought to invoke it involved an African American.
FAILING GRADES. And the President and his Vice-President have done little to fix the public education system, preferring instead to oppose innovative programs like school vouchers that might be most helpful to the disadvantaged.
Still, if a record percentage of African Americans do, in fact, vote Democratic this election, the GOP will have no one to blame but itself. Despite the presence in the Bush campaign of prominent blacks like General Colin Powell and foreign policy scholar Condoleeza Rice, the Compassionate Conservative has made scant effort to woo the African-American electorate.
Many black voters must feel as though they are facing a Hobson's Choice: Go with the Presidential candidate who courts them at election time and then takes them for granted for the next four years -- or pull the lever for the nominee who forgets them after a few throwaway lines in his acceptance speech. Some choice.
Scotti, Business Week senior editor for government and sports business, offers his views every week for BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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