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Apr 6, 2008

The Poverty Czar




Last week, Hillary Clinton announced that, if elected, she would appoint a poverty czar, endowed with authority of a cabinet officer. Issue czars don’t have the best track record over the years (Bill Bennett’s tenure as drug czar comes to mind), and poverty certainly wasn’t a priority of Clinton’s tenure in the Senate, or the initial year of her presidential campaign.

It’s not hard, therefore, to detect a political motive to Clinton’s proposal. The campaign has witnessed her transformation from a DLC viewpoint on economic issues to a more populist approach critical to her new, “Reagan Democrat” base. Moreover, the idea seems like an opportunity before the North Carolina primary to win over the backing of John Edwards—who has described ending poverty as the “cause” of his life, although he devoted little attention to the matter while representing the Tarheel State in the Senate. (It’s not clear Edwards’ endorsement would mean much: one recent poll showed that almost one-third of North Carolina Democrats would be less likely to vote for Clinton if Edwards backed her.)

The intersection between politics and idea of a poverty “czar” is nothing new. Although the term wasn’t used in the 1960s, Sargent Shriver essentially functioned as poverty czar during the Johnson administration. Johnson inherited from Kennedy the idea of a coordinated government campaign against poverty, though the new President, who entered politics as an admirer of FDR, seemed to have a greater personal commitment to the cause.

That said, politics, not policy, dictated the nature of the appointment of Shriver, the late President’s brother-in-law and Peace Corps director. Events of late January 1964 weren’t kind to Johnson: he had experienced a series of troubling revelations regarding his ties to his former Senate aide, Bobby Baker. (Baker eventually would go to jail on corruption charges.) While LBJ was the overwhelming favorite for the 1964 election, ethics was the one issue on which he clearly was vulnerable. Johnson had, after all, become a multi-millionaire despite spending his entire adult life on the government payroll; and, like many Texas Democrats of the time, enjoyed cozy ties with the oil, gas, and business interests that dominated the state’s economy.

Eager to displace the Baker stories from the headlines, and with a late-afternoon press conference looming, LBJ decided to jumpstart plans to name Shriver as a special assistant to the President, to handle poverty matters. Shriver, to put it mildly, was surprised to hear this news, as the clip below reveals.

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About an hour later, having had some time to reflect on the President’s demand, Shriver called back to the White House. From a policy angle, he noted, rushing the appointment made no sense. Johnson was not pleased.

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A bit later in the call, Shriver, fantastically, admitted that he didn’t have a very good idea of the anti-poverty program he would administer. Johnson, again, seemed unfazed.

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Finally, as the call came to an end and with the press conference just 60 minutes away, Shriver bowed to Johnson’s wishes, though in about the most unenthusiastic manner he could possibly muster.

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It’s unlikely Hillary Clinton will ever reach the point where she’s in a position to name her poverty czar. But she, like Johnson before her, has succeeded in getting some political mileage out of the issue.



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Oscar Chamberlain - 4/7/2008

Making poverty more of an issue may be smart poltics, not simply for a primary but for the general election, if she makes it. When middle class Americans believe the economic times are bad, a higher percentage begins to identify with the class they might fall into--or at least they want better safety net to bounce on.

Given Clinton's liberal background, this seems like enlightened pragmatism to me. Pursuing something she would like to pursue anyway because it's good politics for a change.


judith weingarten - 4/7/2008

At least she has a record which can be exaggerated; not all Democratic candidates do. As for the original S-CHIP FactCheck.Org


samuel rotenstreich - 4/6/2008

The center of the argument in this post is that a particular politician has taken a political step.

We are surprised and elated at this revelation.

One may even try to make the argument that Hillary did for poverty more than Edwarads who ran on it. That's simple, since Edwards dedicated himself to fighting poverty only after 2004. I would nevertheless say that both are dedicated to spending larger efforts on the poor.

As for the elephant in the room, he is dedicated to Reagan but not to Bill.


Robert KC Johnson - 4/6/2008

Don't deny that Hillary has a "solid record on Affordable Housing, Kinship Family Care, and similar anti-poverty programs." So do around 40 other Senate Democrats.

As for the SCHIP program, Hillary doubtless has supported it, though this seems to be one of the many issues in the campaign (Bosnia, No. Ireland, NAFTA, the "uninsured" mother and the Ohio hospital, most recently her and Obama's 2005 record on Iraq) where her campaign has exaggerated her record.

The point of the sentence, however, was to say that poverty hadn't been a "priority" of Hillary in the Senate or in her campaign. Given that Hillary noted in an ABC interview, late last year, that she expected the nominating process to be over by Feb. 5, I'm puzzled as to why she didn't propose the poverty "czar" before that date if the issue were such a priority for her. (At that time, of course, she was relying on a quite different constituency, and non-college educated whites earning under $50,000/year were not her base.)


judith weingarten - 4/6/2008

Flabbergasted as always by your take on Hillary: "poverty certainly wasn’t a priority of Clinton’s tenure in the Senate, or the initial year of her presidential campaign".

One of her signature issues is the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) -- an extension of which got through the Senate and House to be vetoed by Bush last October. And she has a solid record on Affordable Housing, Kinship Family Care, and similar anti-poverty programs.