Bill Clinton Was Right

Following up on my email last week about the analogy between welfare reform and school reform, this is a very interesting article -- and not just because someone from the Heritage Foundation praises Bill Clinton! -- tracing the history of how Clinton laid the groundwork for welfare reform years earlier by communicating "a values message, an economic message and a policy message all in one."  We in the school reform movement need to do the same!

 

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Bill Clinton Was Right
He Saw the Roots of America's Welfare Problem

By Robert Rector
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Wednesday, August 23, 2006; 12:00 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082200741.html

As a conservative analyst who spent much of the 1990s working against most of Bill Clinton's agenda -- including even some aspects of his welfare reform proposals -- it pains me to say this.

Bill Clinton was right.

He deserves more credit for the passage of welfare reform than most conservatives probably care to admit.

No, Clinton didn't play a major role in shaping the policy details of the landmark 1996 act. But he understood something about policymaking that many conservative strategists and policy wonks could stand to re-learn: It isn't enough to get the technical details of a policy right. Words and symbols matter, too.

Indeed, thanks in large part to his effective use of words and symbols that challenged liberal orthodoxy on issues surrounding the poor, Bill Clinton not only helped "end welfare as we know it," but he helped end welfare as we know it before anyone even knew it.

To fully understand Clinton's role in the passage of this landmark legislation, one must go back to the early days of the 1992 presidential campaign when Clinton first began trying out his welfare themes. According to New York Times reporter Jason DeParle, Clinton regarded his welfare message as the "all-purpose elixir" of his campaign for the presidency.