THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 13, 1994 TAG: 9411110036
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
With a big assist from Bill Clinton, who got off on the wrong foot and stood on it too long, the Republicans have won.
Have conservative principles triumphed as well? If so, a mean, nasty and trivializing campaign may yield constructive results. There may be debate and votes on measures affecting the role and size of government, the cost of its array of benefits and the ever-growing drag of its debt. Action may supplant gridlock. But in the short run, there is precious little evidence to support this optimistic view.
For one thing, the 1996 presidential campaign is coming into view and there will be felt a need to lay out some pretty promises. Correction: more pretty promises. In their campaign ``contract'' with America, Republicans already have promised billions in tax cuts plus a no-pain balanced budget to be achieved by 2002. (The balance would require $1 trillion in reduced spending or higher revenues, but one is not supposed to sweat the details.)
For their part, the Democrats have vowed to resist a pennyworth of reduction in the biggest benefit programs. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ordinarily one of the Senate's most candid voices, stooped to say that victory for Republicans last week would destroy Social Security.
All this demagoguery, to be sure, is par for the course. Our electoral system encourages it, and tides of money seeking influence pay for it. The money also shrinks to a minimum the ability of legislators to let their judgments be formed by examination and debate of issues.
This is not to say, of course, that the election means little or nothing. It was a whopping rebuke of the president, and of the Democrats who've dominated Congress for decades. The Republicans are resurrected as the preferred party. George Will, in election-night commentary, saw in the results a ``profound ideological shift.''
By that, one guesses, Will means a shift toward federal government that taxes and spends less and is not so involved in attempts to regulate and shape outcomes in the national life. Certainly he means something different than occurred during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Theirs was a ``revolution'' that never occurred.
Tax cuts notwithstanding, spending and borrowing rocketed upward; government did not shrink; taxpayers didn't feel less burdened. There was a Republican explanation, of course; the hemorrhage of red ink was the fault of the Democrats who controlled Congress: If Republicans controlled both the presidency and the Congress, don't you see, the country would come round to a true conservative course, which means cutting spending.
The best result of the election was that Republicans won both houses. When the new Congress convenes, they will have the power and responsibility to show how different they are from spendthrift Democrats - if, indeed, they are different. We should see fairly soon whether Americans have signaled a shift in ideology, as Will believes, or merely in party preference.
The betting, on evidence to date, has to be on the latter. The entitlement programs that consume most of the federal revenues are quite efficient; the checks arrive on time. Although polls indicate public acceptance that entitlement spending must be cut, acceptance ends when a specific program is named.
A genuinely conservative party would confront the public with that conflict and present a program to resolve it. Are the Republicans that conservative? Will they risk being put out in the cold again? MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
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