WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's success in winning approval for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) tells us absolutely nothing about his likely relationship with Congress over the next two years. On the contrary, it may have sent a misleading signal.
This was an easy one. Once Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole signed on behind the agreement last month, there was never any serious doubt that GATT would be approved routinely, although the conspicuously concentrated efforts by the White House to nail down votes may have created some contrived suspense among the uninitiated.
The White House effort was understandable, of course, because the very last thing Clinton needed after the Nov. 8 election debacle would have been a defeat in Congress.
In fact, the case for the Uruguay Round was compelling enough to enlist the great center of both parties, failing only with liberals concerned about the economic effects and conservatives who professed to see the World Trade Organization as a threat to the sovereignty of the United States. The lopsided votes in both houses demonstrated that neither Patrick Buchanan nor Howard Metzenbaum falls anywhere near that political center -- and that Ross Perot is still not a significant influence on policy decisions here.
But this was far more a demonstration of Congress behaving in a nonpartisan fashion than evidence that bipartisanship can work. Like the vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement a year ago, it was a special case signifying nothing.
When Congress returns next month, the situation will be quite different. The Republicans will control both houses. The presidential campaign of 1996 will have begun in earnest. And there are no other issues on which there is a consensus crossing party lines comparable to that for GATT.
There are several issues on which Republicans and Democrats profess to have the same goals. But they are not likely to agree on approaches, and they are even less likely to be willing to share the credit across party lines.
The crime issue is a case in point. The Republicans plan an attack on funding in the 1993 crime bill aimed at prevention but seen by conservatives as just more spending on liberal social programs. This is likely to pose a problem for Clinton because of the substantial bloc of Democrats unwilling to make a crime program totally concentrated on punishment.
On the face of it, the welfare reform question is one on which it might appear that the two parties are headed in the same direction. Both Clinton and the new Republican leaders have done a lot of talking about moving recipients off the welfare rolls into jobs after some specified period.
Such an initiative has obvious political magic. The welfare issue is one that candidate Clinton used to good effect to establish his credentials as "a different kind of Democrat" in the 1992 campaign. And the welfare reform plank in the House Republicans' "Contract with America" won the approval of four of five voters in opinion polls done during the 1994 campaign.
Nonetheless, there are likely to be significant differences between Democrats and Republicans on how rigid to be in denying further assistance to welfare mothers who don't find jobs or who give birth to additional children while receiving benefits. And Clinton cannot ignore the Democratic liberals, including the 40 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who are certain to resist what they see as punitive approaches to the problem.
There seem to be some areas of bipartisan agreement on health care reform. There is broad support across party lines for assuring workers that they can take their insurance coverage from one job to another and for protecting them from cancellations based on pre-existing medical conditions.
But it would be far-fetched to imagine that the Republicans are going to allow Clinton to promulgate some significant reform of the entire system and then use it as a foundation for his re-election campaign.
The notion that the 1996 campaign is already under way may seem outlandish to sensible people with fresh memories of the excesses of the campaign just completed. But it would be naive to believe that both the White House and the Republican leadership are not already focused on that next election.
And that is why the bipartisanship demonstrated on GATT shouldn't be taken seriously.