Let's play small ball! An appropriately modest agenda for 2006.(THE WHITE HOUSE)(lobbying)

WHEN the Lewinsky scandal became the dominant story of the Clinton presidency in 1998, it had three effects on his agenda. First, Clinton lowered his sights. Nothing major was going to get done amid the depositions and court orders. Second, he hugged his base tight. He couldn't afford to let the Left decide he wasn't worth the trouble to defend. As a result of these first two effects, the sporadic talk from the Clinton White House about entitlement reform--including a reform based on individual investment--ended.

But Clinton didn't become a do-nothing president, either. The third effect of the scandal was to increase his determination to make the public think that he was "working hard for the American people." Sometimes that meant making proposals that didn't stand a chance of becoming law. Sometimes it meant issuing executive orders. And sometimes it meant starting what critics derided as "micro-initiatives"--"playing small ball," as Clinton's successor described it.

Now Republicans are involved in scandal, and everyone expects the scandal to stay in the news for months. Their situation is different from that of Clinton in 1998. On the plus side, Bush isn't personally implicated in the scandal, whereas Clinton's behavior was the scandal. On the minus side, the economy, while strong, isn't as strong as it was in 1998. But scandal is likely to have effects on the White House's agenda similar to the ones it had in 1998.

Sights are certainly being lowered. ...