SURGICAL STRIKE

9 minute read
Elizabeth Gleick

Before heading over to the Old Executive Office Building for a joint press conference with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week, President Clinton met privately with several top aides, as usual, to discuss what questions might arise and what his answers should be. Once again in the middle of a debacle in the making–this time over the suddenly controversial nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. for Surgeon General–an irritated Clinton turned to his advisers and asked, “How do I answer the question that either this guy’s lying or I’ve got an incredibly inept White House staff?”

Unfortunately, neither response is pretty–though the President chose the latter. Even as Clinton was reaffirming his support for his nominee, even as Foster was tallying and retallying the number of abortions he has performed in his career as an obstetrician-gynecologist in Nashville, Tennessee, and making public appearances to plead his cause, behind the scenes those inclined to support Foster were proclaiming the nomination dead on arrival– and the Clinton Administration humiliated once again. The ghosts of botched Clinton nominees past–Zoe Baird, Lani Guinier, Bobby Ray Inman–seemed to float through the White House halls. “You can’t help but wonder if there isn’t someone making decisions who is trying to destroy it from within,” admits a disgusted Democrat. “Could there be a mole?”

Almost as soon as Clinton settled on Foster, whose “I Have a Future” program for pregnant teenagers dovetails with the Administration’s plans for a national initiative on teen pregnancy, the nomination was in jeopardy. On Jan. 28, Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas, a pro-choice Republican and chair of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, which will oversee the confirmation hearings, asked Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala whether Foster had ever performed abortions. Shalala said she did not know but would look into the matter. Later that week, Shalala told Kassebaum that Foster had said he performed “only one abortion.” Quickly, that number was revised up, and up again, to 39, according to Foster, and 700, according to antiabortion groups, which also revealed that Foster had conducted clinical trials on an abortion drug in 1981 and perhaps sterilized severely retarded women.

One thing that has observers bewildered is how the White House could have put forward Foster’s nomination without getting the abortion issue squared away in advance. “It wasn’t the first question, and it was closer than it should have been to the last, but it was asked,” a senior White House official told Time about the vetting process. Why anyone believed even for a little while that the pro-choice Foster in 30 years of medical practice could have managed to perform only one abortion is another mystery. Privately, some officials are implicating Shalala and hhs aides for not questioning Foster’s initial response.

Wherever the blame belongs, a senior aide says that Clinton did know Foster had performed abortions but that the President had decided that fact– and his pro-choice stance–would simply not be a problem. “We incorrectly assumed that if you had a candidate like Foster with impeccable credentials, we would weather any attack from the right-to-lifers,” the aide explains. “We believed there wouldn’t be a fire storm because the Republican majority doesn’t want to have this fight.”

In theory, that reasoning makes sense. During the mid-term elections, G.O.P. leaders let such potentially divisive issues as abortion fade into the background as welfare reform and the Republican economic agenda grabbed headlines and votes. There is no mention of abortion in the “Contract with America,” and Gingrich made it clear, in his first few weeks as Speaker, that he hoped to sidestep the issue. The White House bungling, however, has given Republicans an irresistible opportunity to appease the antiabortion crowd on the ground that they were deceived. As Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed puts it, “This nomination is dead. It is not about ideology. It’s about competence.” There has been a tragic level of poor staffing by the White House and hhs. Barely uttering the A word, Gingrich told reporters last Friday that “the most disturbing thing is the quality of the staff work. After two years, how could they be this grotesquely wrong and stumble into a fight of this proportion?” Senate majority leader and presidential hopeful Bob Dole, while not announcing full opposition to Foster, said that “if it gets any worse, they probably shouldn’t send [the nomination] up here.”

Before the Foster controversy blew up–and gave them a common enemy–the abortion issue was threatening to scatter and distract the G.O.P. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the National Right to Life Committee recently declared their opposition to the part of the Republican welfare bill that calls for cutting off aid to pregnant teens because they fear it will encourage abortions. “There is a concern that it will increase the likelihood that poor women, including teen moms, may see few options besides aborting their child, particularly if there is a prohibition on increasing benefits for additional children born to women who are already welfare recipients,” says Patricia King, policy adviser for health and welfare issues for the U.S. Catholic Conference. And even those conservatives who insist that private charities can help fill the void left by welfare acknowledge that existing facilities must be dramatically expanded.

Until the welfare debate begins in earnest, however, it is left to the President to move his back away from the wall as best he can. His initial efforts on Foster’s behalf were hesitant. To many pro-choice advocates, he was uncomfortably slow in remembering to mention that abortion is in fact a legal procedure; but by the end of the week he was offering a more spirited defense of his nominee. But key support from such Democratic Senators as Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy has been noticeably tepid, and Joseph Biden grumped publicly that Clinton should withdraw Foster’s nomination; then he flip-flopped and said he would reserve judgment.

Too late perhaps, White House advisers decided to try to make the charged politics of abortion work for them. Though some concede they would have preferred to save a defining battle over abortion for the 1996 presidential campaign, the President’s inner circle hopes at least to inflict pain on the Republicans by forcing the debate now. “We stumbled into the fight, but now that we’re in it, we see that it’s a fight we want to have,” says an aide. “[It] will speak volumes about who controls the Republican Party.” He adds, “We may not win it, but it’s worth pointing out that one side of the party– the right-to-lifers–are leading the Republicans by the nose.” Christian Coalition leader Reed plunged into this strategy by declaring last Friday that–for his 1.5 million members–abortion would be a litmus-test issue in 1996.

By week’s end, the White House had sent Foster out to defend himself– though not, Washington insiders point out, to anyone who will actually decide his fate. The doctor appeared first on abc’s Nightline–“a pretty dignified public forum,” in the words of an Administration source. As a sign of support, Administration officials insisted that host Ted Koppel interview Foster in the White House; when Lani Guinier found herself fighting to save her nomination as head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department in 1993, she appeared on Nightline against Administration wishes. Foster also spoke last Friday with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and with medical students at George Washington University. “I believe in the right of a woman to choose,” he told the students. “And I also support the President’s belief that abortions should be safe, legal and rare. The irony of the debate is that my life’s work has been dedicated to making sure young people don’t have to face the choice of abortion.”

The wisest thing to do may be to let Foster’s record speak for itself. For in many ways, according to those who have worked with him, Foster seems an ideal candidate for Surgeon General. He was one of President Bush’s “Points of Light”–a man who has spent most of his career tending to the poor in the inner city of Nashville and preaching abstinence to teenagers. In 1987, as chief of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Meharry Medical College, where he is now acting director, he started the “I Have a Future” program in two housing projects near the hospital. The program, says director Lorraine Greene, offers participants art, dance and creative writing lessons, computer and vocational training, and counseling. “You have to get young people to want to delay pregnancy by making it unattractive because they’ve got so much to look forward to,” Greene explains.

Foster’s confirmation hearings–if it comes to that–are still weeks away, and it is unclear whether the White House can right itself, or whether the nominee will be left to dangle. A source close to the process tells Time that the Administration is also prepping a backup choice just in case. “No one believes the White House will stick by Foster,” says an aide to a liberal Senate Democrat. “Even if they stand by him today, nobody up here has the faith that they won’t pull the rug out from under him tomorrow.” And if the past is any guide, the good doctor may be the last to know.

–Reported by Ann Blackman, Nina Burleigh and James Carney/ Washington, Janice Castro/ New York and Elisabeth Kauffman/Knoxville

-QUOTE-

“My life’s work has been dedicated to making sure young people don’t have to face the choice of abortion.”

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