Democrats Search for Their Soul.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: President Bush borrows the Bill Clinton style to promote his programs

It's no picnic being a Democrat these days. Without control of the executive branch or either house of Congress, the Dems are constantly surprised by Republican maneuvers that set the agenda in Washington. To make matters worse, they are internally divided about the appropriate response to the Republican onslaught. The Democrats are getting a taste of what it was like to be in the opposition when Clinton was President, especially since George W. Bush's style turns out to be positively Clintonesque.

The President's first major address to Congress began and ended on a note of plagiarism. He kicked off the speech by borrowing the Children's Defense Fund's trademark slogan, "Leave No Child Behind," and closed with the rallying cry of the United Farm Workers, "Juntos Podemos" (Together We Can).

From the moment he began shaking hands and kissing African American members of Congress to the point when he declared that he would end racial profiling in America--as soon as Attorney General John Ashcroft gives him a plan--Bush was intent on buffing his party's "compassionate conservative" image.

Just as Clinton tried to make the Democrats look more like the Republicans by declaring that "the era of big government is over" and by claiming to have found a "third way" between liberalism and conservatism, Bush dismissed what he called "an old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need."

Beneath the soft political rhetoric, however, is a radical budget proposal.

As Democrats Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt pointed out in their response to the President's budget address, the tax cut Bush proposes would grossly increase inequality. More than 40 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 percent of Americans--those who earn $900,000 a year, on average. That 1 percent would get a $46,000 average annual windfall, while the bottom 60 percent of Americans would get a measly $227 per year.

"Let the American people spend their own money to meet their own needs," Bush declared. That will be a lot easier for those who reap the benefits of the tax cut.

Not surprisingly, the people who brought you Bill Clinton and the New Democrat style of leadership--the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)--are having trouble responding to Bush. Middle-of-the-roadism is the reason for the New Democrats' existence. On its web site the group crows that "the New Democrat Agenda...