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By SARA FRITZ, Times Washington Bureau Chief © St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton chuckles when he remembers how a man in Alabama once called him a "scalawag." The man had no idea that the nation's 42nd president would, in fact, use that word fondly to characterize his role in modern American political history. Of course, when Clinton's critics use the term, they are calling him a rascal. They are referring to the seemingly limitless array of scandals that culminated in Clinton becoming only the second U.S. president ever to be impeached. But when Clinton calls himself a scalawag, he is, instead, expanding on the original meaning of the word. In the post-Civil War era, a scalawag was a white Southerner who supported the Union. Like the original scalawags, Clinton says, he has been a lightning rod for criticism throughout his political career because he does not fulfill the stereotypes of either a liberal Democrat or a conservative Southern politician. "They see me as an apostate, which I welcome," Clinton explains. "It's like a Catholic being pro-choice." As Clinton tells his own story, he arrived on the national scene in the early 1990s at a time when the Republican Party had become very adept at portraying Democrats as too liberal. "I think they really believed that America saw Republicans as the guarantor of the country's security and values and prudence in financial matters," he said recently in one of many speeches and interviews summing up the legacy of his eight years in office. ". . . They could always turn Democrats into cardboard cutouts of what they really were; they could caricaturize them as almost un-American. ". . . So I came along, and I had ideas on crime and welfare and economic management and foreign policy that were difficult for them to characterize that way. And we won. And they were really mad." Clinton wants history to remember him as a president who was elected at a moment of extreme political polarization and who taught the nation it could turn away from what he calls "false choices" to forge a centrist government. "You had to be liberal or conservative," says Clinton, referring to the early days of his presidency. "You had to be left or right. You had to be this or that. And we replaced them with a new set of ideas that have come to be called the Third Way, because they've been embraced not just here in America, but increasingly all across the world by people who were trying to break out of outmoded political and economic and social arrangements to deal with the real challenges of the 21st century . . . "I've tried to restore a vital dynamic center to American life." Certainly Clinton overstates the transformation rendered by his embrace of a Third Way. Politics in Washington today seems almost as polarized on the eve of the inauguration of Republican President-elect George W. Bush as it was eight years ago when Clinton took the oath. But Clinton, in his self-assessments, makes a good case that he succeeded as president whenever he chose a centrist course and failed whenever he reverted to the old political dichotomy. Welfare reform, elimination of the federal deficit, the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- these steps will be remembered as the successes of the Clinton administration in large part because they grew out of his efforts to defy political norms. Unfortunately, Clinton says, he did not understand this dynamic as clearly when he entered the White House in 1993 as he does today. Thus his first mistake was to propose two initiatives that Republicans were able to attack as traditional liberalism -- his initiative on gays in the military and his health care reform proposal. Clinton's single biggest regret as president is that he did not push for welfare reform -- instead of health care reform -- at the beginning of his tenure. He feels he found a firmer footing after those initial defeats. "I didn't prevail on heath care; I didn't prevail on gays in the military," he recalls. "I haven't won every fight I've been in. But the big things that would have taken us down, and taken the country in a different direction -- the budget and government shutdown, impeachment and the big tax cut, those three things were the seminal battles, and we prevailed." In retrospect, Clinton sees former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican takeover of the House in 1994 as a fleetingly successful reaction to his effort to establish a Third Way. Later, after Gingrich was swept from office by dissidents in his own party, Clinton believes he won grudging cooperation from most Republicans and worked effectively with Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. The latest testimonial to his efforts to establish a Third Way, in Clinton's view, is that President-elect Bush seems to be following along roughly the same path. "I remember the first time I heard Gov. Bush give his compassionate conservative speech," Clinton says. ". . . I thought this is pretty good, this basically says, "Okay, I'm a New Democrat, except I'll do more of it with the private sector than the public sector and I'll have a bigger tax cut.'" In Congress, adherents to Clinton's New Democrat philosophy wrote a letter to Bush last week, volunteering that they "look forward to working with you on common objectives," including education reform, free trade and a centrist fiscal policy. Clinton sees this as further proof of his success. Like Frank Sinatra, Clinton claims to have few regrets. He leaves office disappointed that his belated efforts in the realm of foreign diplomacy did not lead to a settlement of age-old disagreements in the Middle East. And of course, he is not particularly proud of the Monica Lewinsky affair -- even though he did not see it as a justification for impeachment. Clinton refuses to discuss the likely impact of impeachment on his legacy, even though he has told some confidants privately that he considers it a "badge of courage." "That's for the historians to determine," he says. "The history books will also record, I think, that both impeachments were wrong and that's when they failed. And I'm grateful for that. Unlike Andrew Johnson (the first president impeached), I was less embittered by it and I had more support from the public and Congress. . . . I was able to resume my duties and actually get a lot done for the American people in the aftermath." As he prepares to move his belongings out of the White House Jan. 20, Clinton takes great personal comfort in knowing that the American public -- according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center -- has bestowed upon him a sort of "thank you" gift that will enhance his stature in history: a surprisingly high 64 percent favorability rating.
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