FOR the first time in his presidency, Bill Clinton this week showed that he can get as mad as the rest. In an unexpected outburst in a speech in Chicago, the normally urbane president, fired up by a heckler, railed against Congress for holding up his legislative programme, saying ''gridlock is bad for America''.
The G-word, of course, was the leitmotiv of his two Republican predecessors when complaining of a Democrat-controlled legislature standing in the way of conservative policies. With a supposedly friendly Congress under him, it was not expected that Mr Clinton would have recourse to the same complaint.
He appeared to have cause for concern; not only were members of both parties arguing all the way to the tape on the minutiae of his budget package, but Republicans had filibustered a National Service Bill and, more incredibly, the US$3 billion flooding aid package. Mid West republicans had to go home to explain to angry farmers, whose livelihood had been destroyed, that they were blocking the proposal in an effort to find the funding from further public spending cuts rather than yet more federal borrowing.
Although the flood measure finally passed, Mr Clinton's ire can barely be abated when he looks at the progress of the National Service Bill. This seemingly innocuous, non-partisan Bill would spend nearly US$400 million a year providing educational grantsto young people on community service projects. Republicans have been filibustering the legislation for a week, branding it another Clinton ''tax and spend'' nightmare.
But when it hit the House floor for another day of congressional snakes and ladders on Wednesday, a new sinister note entered proceedings, sparking four hours of acrimonious debate. The subject, incongruously, was one that has been nagging at the Americanconsciousness for weeks - illegal immigration.
WITH every Chinese boat that founders off the coast, and with every wave of wetbacks crossing the border into Texas, newspapers, broadcasters and, naturally politicians, have begun saying what the Statue of Liberty can hardly believe she would ever hear; that immigration has gone too far.
President Clinton's long-expected announcement the day before of a crackdown on illegal immigration, backed up by US$172 million for more border officers, was certainly welcomed; but it has opened a can of worms in which taxpayers are no longer afraid to voice their alarm at the tide of immigration for fear of being branded racist. Suddenly illegal immigration, Saddam Hussein notwithstanding, is public enemy number one.
