WASHINGTON -- There's a special irony in former President Jimmy Carter's emergence again as a foreign policy Mr. Fix-It, this time in Bosnia. His latest role comes as President Clinton is being widely cast as another Jimmy Carter -- not as a peacemaker but as another Democrat on the road to a one-term presidency.
Carter's mission underscores Clinton's failure to have a decisive voice in ending the fighting in Bosnia. In the same way, his earlier missions in North Korea and Haiti were reminders of the ineffectiveness of Clinton policies.
In light of the former president's negotiating successes in those two countries, the White House had little choice this time but to shelve its reservations about Carter in Bosnia and his penchant for putting the best face on things. Carter emphasized that he would be representing the Carter Center in Atlanta, not Clinton. The center has become a constructive forum for research and discussion on how to resolve disputes between nations and factions.
Carter's stature as a former president has eclipsed those of the previous White House occupants who have slipped into retirement or service on corporate boards. But his years in the White House continue to be the subject of derision. So Bill Clinton needs no reminders of the Carter presidency.
Besides, where Clinton needs the most help is not in foreign policy, but in addressing voter dissatisfaction at home. Clinton finds himself roughly in the same political dilemma that faced Carter approximately halfway into his term. He is down in the polls and considered so vulnerable that talk of a challenge to his renomination is being heard.
The advice pouring into Clinton to get back to being the "New Democrat" he told voters he was in 1992 parallels a memo to Carter in early 1979 from pollster and political strategist Patrick Caddell reminding him that in his 1976 election he "had promised the people he would be a different kind of president." Caddell counseled Carter to return in his remaining period as president to the themes that had elected him.
By the time he tried to do so, however, the voters' judgment of Carter had been locked in. That is the same danger for Clinton as he tries to define himself anew as a man of centrist policies aimed at addressing the needs of middle-income Americans.
But while Carter functions as a free agent in foreign affairs, some Democrats seem to disregard the fact that they have a leader occupying the Oval Office.
The decision of the next House Democratic leader, Rep. Dick Gephardt, to upstage Clinton by presenting his own plan for middle-income tax cuts is a glaring example. So was his pointed observation that the House Democrats would chart their own course, a view echoed for Senate Democrats by their new leader, Sen. Tom Daschle.
As troubled as the Carter presidency was, there were no similarly bold declarations of independence by the Democratic congressional leaders after the Democratic losses in the midterm elections of 1978. And it was not until well into the second half of Carter's term that speculation began about a challenge to his renomination -- eventually made by Sen. Ted Kennedy and Gov. Jerry Brown of California. Nor was there any notable talk of Carter not seeking a second term, as there is regarding Clinton.
If Carter had not established himself as an effective peacemaker and negotiator as a private citizen, Clinton might have kept him in rein by appointing him as an administration foreign policy trouble-shooter. But the former president has demonstrated conclusively that he is more acceptable to parties in conflict as an independent voice. He needs no official role to open doors for him.
As Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadic said in explaining his invitation to Carter to step in, "America has been a little biased toward the [Bosnian] Muslims. Carter . . . will be impartial." And if he pulls off another diplomatic breakthrough, Clinton might benefit, too, provided he follows it with the sort of decisive action he displayed in the wake of Carter's success in averting a U.S. invasion of Haiti.