The president's spokesman now has the temerity to state that Clinton favors D.C. statehood (which is not even the issue for which the license plates seek support, but never mind that). So in his eight years in office, what did this president do to promote democracy in the District?

Let's see: He sat by while Congress danced all over this city's partial democracy. He let his Justice Department lawyers attack a moderate effort by some of the city's most thoughtful advocates to persuade the courts that voting rights for the District are not only constitutional, but essential. He kept hinting that he would reverse the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in front of the White House -- a great symbol of the city's commitment to openness -- but never got around to doing so. And he repeatedly appointed out-of-towners to run the colonial boards that control local planning.

Even on his way out the door, the president is spinning madly, desperate to be liked, ramrod confident that we won't see the obvious contradictions of his ways.

He is, however, one of the most savvy pols of all time. He's put the next president in a pretty pickle. To stay true to his anti-democratic views about his new home town, George W. will now have to take an active step of dissing the District. He'll have to remove the new plates before they've even collected their first layer of soot.

I love the new D.C. plates, for their cheekiness, for their simple power, for their ability to build and display pride -- all in three elegant words. On the second day the tags were available, I waited in endless lines in the snake pit of the Department of Motor Vehicles to get mine. (Amazingly, despite efforts to create the illusion of efficiency, the DMV clings to the Soviet-style system of multiple lines for a single transaction. To switch your plates, you must wait first to get a number, then again at a separate window to hand in your application, a third time to pay the cashier, and a fourth time to collect your new plates. Four people to do the job one could do.)

But the license plates are a rhetorical device, a ploy by a people who have finally realized that lip service from both parties will never rise to the level of action.

We're so hungry for support, so eager to participate in the same democracy that daily derides us as partial citizens, that the voting rights movement immediately hailed Clinton's move. And it is indeed stirring that the president's car will carry a sly dig at the very government he heads. Name another country where that ever might have happened.

Amy Slemmer, who runs DC Vote, a spunky group of voting rights activists, declined my invitation to spell out Clinton's failures to push for the District. "Do we wish he would have been more visible earlier?" she said. "Of course. But we're delighted that he's taken this symbolic step as he leaves office. He's the highest-profile driver in the District. Even if it's only toward the end of the term, it's helpful. I just hope President Bush will take it one step farther and take substantive steps."

So do I, but let's not hold our breath. Mark Plotkin, the indefatigable crusader for District voting rights and WAMU political commentator, notes that Bush has been crystal-clear on D.C. statehood, congressional representation and home rule -- he's against them all. (It's not, however, clear that Bush understands that those are three different issues. In interviews during the primary season, he used the terms interchangeably.)

It was Plotkin who pushed hard for the president to put the new tags on his limo, "specifically to atone for his past indifference and neglect." For years, Plotkin has pined for one great Clintonian speech to the nation on the injustice of depriving half a million Americans of the vote, one shining burst of oratory in which the Man from Hope goes public with the great line he once gave Plotkin on the steps of the LBJ Library in Texas, when then-candidate Clinton compared the hopes of D.C. residents to "the freedom-loving aspirations of the people of Eastern Europe."

We're not going to hear that speech. If we want to know our president's view on D.C. voting rights, we're going to have to get down on the pavement and suck up his exhaust fumes.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

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