Liberalism in disarray.

• Author: Bresler, Robert

PRES. CLINTON'S shifting style on crucial policy matters has vexed his supporters in the nation and in Congress. Observers speculate over who has the President's ear and who is driving the agenda. One day the President is defending Medicare and Medicaid from the heartless Republican Congress, the next day he is sharing a platform with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich reaching for a common ground on budget cuts. In February, Clinton presented a budget with deficits as far as the eye could see, then, in June, announced a plan for a balanced budget by the year 2005 that included cuts in Medicare, the issue Congressional Democrats wanted to ride into 1996.

No matter how maddening Clinton's political re-inventions of self may be, the problem lies not in his uncertain nature. Even a forceful presidential personality would have a difficult time trying to reconcile the fundamental contradictions of modem liberalism and the conflict this engenders within the Democratic Party. In mid 20th-century America, the glory years of liberalism, Democratic presidents could accommodate the claims of their constituent groups with an expanding social service state. Those days are over. In this era of slower economic growth, big government comes at the price of large deficits and high taxes. Even a president with the charm of Franklin Roosevelt or the will of Lyndon Johnson would find this challenge daunting.

The winds of change have buffeted the liberal establishment to such a degree that its center of gravity virtually has disappeared. Even finding common ground for the vaunted Democratic base-old-line labor leaders, the Rainbow Coalition, Democratic Leadership Council, Gay and Lesbian Alliance, environmentalists, American Association of Retired Persons--is no easy task. Expanding the base to include sourthern Democrats and new suburbanites seems close to impossible.

The collapse of the Clinton heath care plan followed by the Republican takeover of Congress represents the coup de grace for welfare liberalism. When Clinton refused early in the year to offer his own blueprint for a balanced budget and let the Republicans take the heat for cuts, he earned the wrath not only of Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, but of moderates in his own party. When Clinton finally presented a proposal for an eventual balanced budget, Jesse Jackson, the Black Caucus, and liberal leaders in the House cried betrayal.

These divisions between liberals and moderates practically are...