Bill Clinton should have known his energy tax was in jeopardy when lobbyists who opposed it offered the people of Billings, Montana, a free lunch of cold cuts and chocolate cake. Citizens for a Sound Economy, a Washington antitax group, placed full-page ads earlier this month in the Billings Gazette, inviting residents to a noon rally to learn the evils of the President's proposed tax on the heat content of fuels. More than 150 people -- a virtual mob by Big Sky standards -- gathered at a downtown hotel to hear a Washington economist explain that the tax would cost every Montana family $500 a year and deprive the state of 1,500 jobs. After urging citizens to telephone their disapproval to Montana's Max Baucus, a Democrat on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee, the economist invited his audience to help themselves to turkey, ham, cheese, salads, cake, apple pie and ice tea.
Such old-fashioned politicking, quietly replayed across a belt of carefully chosen Western and Midwestern cities and towns this spring, finally caught up last week with Clinton's new-fashioned energy tax. The well-organized lobbying buried the $72 billion BTU levy that was the centerpiece of the President's deficit-reduction plan. A chastened Clinton pulled back from the bruising fight and left the Senate Finance Committee to wrangle over a replacement plan that included some combination of a gasoline tax and cuts in Medicare. The negotiations will be tense as the committee struggles to meet its deadline this Friday. Said Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, the Administration's economic point man: "Sometimes I chew the rug."
Weakened during his first 20 weeks in office, Clinton appears to be seeking the path of least resistance. He is hosting small dinner parties for the Washington insiders he once vowed to ignore. He withdrew from hard-nosed budget bargaining in part to avoid further loss of political capital. Some of this is pragmatic politics, because to remain in the fray over arcane tax provisions, said a White House official, "is a prescription for failure." But there are also signs that Clinton is increasingly spooked by opposition of almost any size. Last week he backed away from a widely leaked plan to name Bruce Babbitt to the Supreme Court when environmentalists complained that they would be losing their key ally at the Interior Department. When Robert Dole of Kansas and Orrin Hatch of Utah objected to Babbitt's lack of courtroom experience, it was more flak than Clinton could bear.
The President set his sights on federal Appeals Judge Stephen Breyer, summoning him from Boston for Friday lunch at the White House and immediately boosting the jurist to front-runner status. But weekend reports that Breyer has a "Zoe Baird problem" clouded what had become a near certainty. As Breyer volunteered early on to the Administration, he had failed to pay almost $5,000 in Social Security taxes for an 81-year-old part-time domestic in his employ since 1980. Last February, even before Supreme Court Justice Byron White announced his retirement, Breyer paid up. Although White House aides maintained Clinton was "still leaning" toward the jurist, it was a paltry echo of earlier encomiums.