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6 | Bill clinton’s last campaign A “night deposit” was the label incoming OMB director Mitch Daniels gave to the collection of rules and regulatory proposals left behind by President Bill Clinton. Six months into the presidency of George W. Bush, his administration had completed a review of Clinton’s end-of-term rules and was in the process of overturning or modifying forty-five of them. One strategy in the effort to reverse Clinton’s regulations was to stress their timing as part of the argument made to overturn them. In an interview with the Washington Post, Daniels echoed a message sounded by other administration officials, insisting that the last-minute nature of the rules suggested “they were ill-considered or ill-intentioned or both.”1 The Bush team framed their action as a measured response to capricious exercise of executive power to push through an assortment of regulations as favors to labor unions, environmentalists, and other interests. According to this narrative, Clinton took advantage of the weeks that followed the 2000 election, at an opportune time when the nation’s attention was fixed upon the high-stakes battle over the Florida recount and the Supreme Court case that determined who would be his successor. Constitutionally prohibited from running for a third term, Clinton applied the tactics he had honed four years earlier when he ran for reelection and waged a new campaign for his legacy. The policy activism at the end of Clinton’s presidency was exceptional. More than 26,500 pages were added to the Federal Register during his last eleven weeks in office. Clinton was not only prolific; he threw himself into the process. In contrast to his predecessor, and especially his successor, both of whom floated their last-minute rule changes under the radar, Clinton trained the spotlight on his unilateral initiatives. He believed they were popular and that raising their profile would build political support. In this sense Clinton approached his midnight regulations with the zeal of a political campaign. By taking ownership of the initiatives discussed in this chapter, he could claim credit for their success long after his departure. Following the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Clinton saw bill clinton’s last campaign • 107 administration as the principal means with which to advance his domestic agenda.2 Through such strategies as executive orders and signing statements, he scored major accomplishments while avoiding partisan battles. Even before the defeat of his health care reform proposal and the Democrats’ loss of their congressional majority, an impasse over mining and grazing reform legislation prompted Clinton to abandon a legislative strategy and pursue reforms through BLM rulemaking. Several of these end runs around Congress were completed during the final weeks of his presidency, including strict new standards for levels of arsenic in drinking water, and a ban on road building in roadless areas of national forests, which the timber and mining industries opposed bitterly.3 The end of his term also presented opportunities for unilateral action on agenda items deferred from his first term, such as mining reform.4 There were symbolic gestures as well. Stymied by Senate refusal to confirm his judicial nominees, Clinton made a recess appointment to the U.S. Circuit Court. He even made a show of support for District of Columbia statehood by affixing a DC “Taxation without Representation” license plate to the presidential limousine in December.5 This flurry of activity was not limited to domestic affairs, however. He negotiated trade treaties and attempted to broker a peace agreement in Israel. On New Year’s Eve Clinton signed a treaty to establish an International Criminal Court that he had previously been reluctant to support.6 The Bush team expected a high volume of new regulations would be pushed through during the Clinton Administration’s final days. As soon as Bush was sworn in as the forty-third president, the heads of all executive departments and agencies were placed on notice by a high authority. Incoming chief of staff Andrew Card Jr. issued a memorandum delaying the effective date of new regulations by sixty days and suspending rules that had been submitted but not yet published by the Office of the Federal Register. In addition, independent agencies were instructed to act “in the interest of sound regulatory practice and the avoidance of costly, burdensome or unnecessary regulation.”7 One reason the Bush team anticipated all this regulatory activity was recent history. Four years earlier Clinton had aided his own reelection...

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