One lesson to take from former Representative Margolies’s vote deciding vote on President Clinton’s budget is: “fall on your sword, it’s the right thing to do, we’ll give you an ambassadorship.” A better lesson is: “vote yes because the politically worse decision is to vote no.”
There has been a lot of talk this week about Marjorie Margolies (formerly Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky) and her vote on Clinton’s budget that passed the bill and cost her the election. The story line is that this vote is worth your job. Vote yes now, lose in November, and that is the just and right thing to do.
But what if Margolies has voted “no”? The bill would have likely failed. What of her election? Or the elections of other Democrats? Or even Clinton’s re-election? What of the policies on which liberals look back wistfully?
It is worth recalling that Ms. Margolies was not the only Democratic member of the House to lose her job that year. A lot of folks lost their jobs in ’94, and not just because of the budget vote. Representatives who voted for and against the budget, NAFTA, and just about everything else lost. In 1994, an incumbent Democrat was an incumbent Democrat regardless of the voting record. I would bet a lot of money that has Ms. Margolies voted against the budget, she still would have lost.
But what of the larger picture? What if she voted “no”, the bill failed and she did get re-elected?
First to the politics.
A first term President just finding his feet would have suffered a major blow, weakening his political stature even further.
Democrats would have failed to do anything meaningful about the economy or deficit, potentially making the 1994 losses even worse.
The political failure to pass the budget, compounded with the political weakness (and thus inability to accomplish other priorities) combined with the failure of health care could have lead to a very different election in 1996 and certainly would have made it harder for Democrats to claw their way back to the majority in the House.
A bad political decision would have been to vote for the budget – the only worse decision would have been to vote against it and tank the legislation.
Second, to the policy.
President Clinton’s budget helped economic growth and set the nation on a path not just to a balanced budget but to public concern that we were paying down the debt too fast.
The President’s political weakness would have impaired his ability to pass (or block) other policies as well.
This is all off-the-cuff speculation of course, absent a Clarence to lead us through the snowy streets of Washington in an alternate 1996 we’ll never know what might have been. Never the less, as my undecided friends in the House do their political calculations (you know who you are) it is worth considering.
