ocrats joined Republicans in Congress to pass the
Gulf War resolution in 1991.
With the rapid increase in the size of the federal
budget deficit during the 1980’s and early 1990’s,
competing proposals from both major parties domi-
nated discussions of domestic spending. Liberals
failed to substantially increase or create new pro-
grams to address poverty, urban decay, child care,
and health care for uninsured Americans. While
public opinion in the United States increasingly ex-
pressed support for more liberal policies on public
education and environmental protection—that is,
greater federal spending and regulations—it also
expressed more conservative positions on such is-
sues as deficit reduction, tax cuts, abortion rights,
and the death penalty. Liberals hoped that the end
of the Cold War meant significantly lower defense
spending, decreased use of military power in foreign
policy, and a greater emphasis on foreign policy fo-
cusing on human rights, the AIDS epidemic, and en-
vironmental protection. Nonetheless, it was mostly
liberal Democrats in Congress who pressured Bill
Clinton’s administration to use military interven-
tion for humanitarian reasons in Haiti, Somalia, and
Kosovo.
Liberalism and Two-Party Politics Believing that
American voters unfavorably associated liberalism
with high taxes, excessive welfare spending, and
weakness on crime and national defense, President
Clinton did not publicly identify himself as a lib-
eral. Instead, he ran for the 1992 Democratic presi-
dential nomination and in the general election as a
self-proclaimed centrist New Democrat who prom-
ised deficit reduction, a middle-class tax cut,
tougher crime control, and an end to “welfare as we
know it.” Withmost voters dividing their support be-
tween Bush andindependent presidential candi-
date H. Ross Perot, Clinton was elected president
with 43 percent of the popular vote. Democrats lost
seats but retained control of Congress in the 1992
elections.
In 1993, House Republicans led by representative
Newt Gingrich of Georgia, conservative interest
groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA)
and the American Medical Association (AMA), the
Religious Right, and conservative media commenta-
tors portrayed Clinton and the Democratic Con-
gress as insincere, big government liberals who were
increasing taxes and regulations and threatening
traditional moral values. In particular, these conser-
vative critics opposed Clinton’s policy efforts on gun
control, national health insurance, and gays in the
military.
Meanwhile, some liberals, especially those from
the environmental protection and labor move-
ments, opposed Clinton’s support for the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). They
feared that NAFTA would be detrimental to global
environmental protection and unionized blue-
collar jobs in the United States. Likewise, some Afri-
can American liberals were dismayed by Clinton’s
greater emphasis on crime control and prison ex-
pansion than on antipoverty programs.
These political conditions contributed to the Re-
publicans winning control of Congress in the 1994
midterm elections. The Republican victory, how-
ever, enabled Clinton to distance himself from lib-
eral Democrats and behave as a moderate power
broker between liberals and conservatives in Con-
gress on such issues as budget negotiations, deficit
reduction, antiterrorist legislation, and welfare re-
form. Clinton’s moderate, compromising leader-
ship style became known as “triangulation” and was
the major theme of his reelection campaign strategy
in 1996. Polls indicated that most Americans agreed
with Clinton’s moderate leadership and his por-
trayal of Republicans, especially Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich, as unreasonable, right-wing
ideologues. Clinton easily defeated Republican
presidential nominee Bob Dole in the 1996 presi-
dential election.
While many Americans credited Clinton with over-
seeing a prosperous economy and steadily reducing
the budget deficit, some liberals in Congress and
among interest groups like the Children’s Defense
Fund and Greenpeace were disappointed that Clin-
ton had not attempted or accomplished more policy
progress on poverty, environmental protection, and
urban decay. Nevertheless, liberals staunchly sup-
ported Clinton when Republicans impeached, tried,
but failed to convict Clinton in 1998-1999 on legal is-
sues stemming from his sexual affair with White
House intern Monica Lewinsky. Polls and voting be-
havior in the 1998 midterm elections indicated that
there was a clear, growing division of cultural and
moral values among Americans that was highlighted
by the issues of impeachment and adultery. These
value differences between pro-impeachment and
anti-impeachment Americans became a major influ-514 Liberalism in U.S. politics The Nineties in America