The Democrats The Party's New Soul

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Democratic conventions have never been for the fainthearted. Whatever Democrats believe, they tend to believe it with the brawling gusto of a radio talk-show host. Whether it was Chicago Mayor Richard Daley snarling read-my- lips obscenities in 1968 or Senator Edward Kennedy battling a sitting President to the last bitter moment in 1980, Democrats have settled their differences with the civility of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Even the 1932 convention that first nominated Party Icon Franklin Roosevelt was raucous and bitter. As H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "The great combat is ending this afternoon in classical Democratic manner. That is to say, the victors are full of uneasiness and the vanquished are full of bile."

Given this unforgiving history, something strange and profoundly un- Democratic is happening with the coronation of Michael Dukakis in Atlanta this week. After rending themselves apart for two decades, the Democrats have now come as close as they ever do to party harmony. There is nervousness, to be sure, over Jesse Jackson's failure to receive the respect and deference he craves and deserves. Will he, in the end, yield gracefully or grudgingly to the inevitability of Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen? Could the Dukakis-Jackson rift result in a lasting schism along racial lines? Such tensions are serious, but a party built around uneasy coalitions should be used to them.

What is telling, however, is the way the Democrats seem to have papered over doctrinal disputes. Dukakis is the party's first postliberal nominee: he blends thrift, managerial skill, social tolerance and a nonbellicose foreign policy with the Democratic mantra of "Good jobs at good wages." By anointing Bentsen last week, Dukakis further complicated the game of pin-the-label-on- the-donkey. With his centrist, probusiness views, Bentsen is a preliberal, a throwback to the days of the Solid South, when Democrats were created by birth, not belief. Thus the party that ruled almost uninterrupted during the Great Liberal Hegemony from 1932 to 1968 has paired a postliberal with a preliberal for a ticket that suggests a donkey headed in two directions at once.

Such philosophic fuzziness is shrewd politics. But it suggests that the Democrats have lost the will to define themselves. After the agonizing reappraisals of the Great Society and the divisiveness of Viet Nam, is there a soul to the Democratic Party? Is there a coherent ideology to replace the promise-them-anything, interest-group liberalism that animated the party from F.D.R. to Walter Mondale? Or, after two straight tidal-wave defeats, have the Democrats extinguished their spark in a belated effort to adapt to the Age of Reagan?

The zeal with which the President has pursued his conservative domestic agenda has both united the Democrats as the party of opposition and severely limited their room for maneuver. As Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank points out, "The deficit is a great constrainer. If we had another $50 billion to spend, we would argue over how to spend it." From Dukakis on down, the Democratic gospel still includes ritual phrases like "unmet national needs" and "reorienting our priorities." But there is a hollowness to this rhetoric that reflects the barrenness of the federal cupboard. How could any Democrat today have the temerity to propose anything as grandiose as a Great Society when the funds are barely available to maintain an Adequate Society?

The deficit also provides many Democrats with a smoke screen to cover their loss of faith in the old liberal solutions. As long ago as 1975, a newly elected Governor named Dukakis proclaimed that "much of what government has tried to do over the past 15 years has failed." The Dukakis remark was not an isolated comment. Rather, it reflected a widespread soul-searching, continuing to this day, over the failure of ambitious social programs to make much discernible headway against poverty. As Michael Barker, a leading Democratic economic analyst, says, "Not only is there no Democratic agenda, we've almost reached the point where there's no faith in even having an agenda."

The Democrats come to Atlanta convinced -- after 20 years in the wilderness -- that they have finally achieved wisdom through suffering. Unlike earlier defeats, there was something particularly chastening about 1984. Walter Mondale was the candidate of the party establishment who was nominated at a well-choreographed convention -- and still he lost 49 states. "Nineteen eighty-four was a massive shock of realism," recalls Texas Democratic Chairman Bob Slagle. "The party discovered that people didn't like Democrats anymore; they thought we were just single-issue people." The lesson was unmistakable: any party that has not carried a single state larger than ; Georgia (twelve electoral votes) since 1976 cannot afford the luxury of internecine warfare.

Democrats had vowed to abandon the folly of faction before, but these promises were like sending the Battling Bickersons to marriage counseling. But 1988 was different, in part, because the primaries symbolized the passing of the generational torch; neither Dukakis nor any of his rivals had been elected to major political office before 1974. The Democratic sweep in that post- Watergate year was a watershed, bringing to power a talented crop of young reformers -- including Dukakis -- who realized that old-fashioned liberalism was in trouble. Social issues such as busing and crime had eroded the party's blue-collar base, while middle-class voters saw the Democrats as wastrels throwing money at problems. This Democratic class of '74 talked the language of suburban voters concerned with high taxes, yet sympathetic to the party's identification with social tolerance.

By trial and error, Dukakis also helped discover the other central tenet of the emerging new ideology: the Democrats must again become the apostles of economic growth. To do this, Dukakis had to break free of liberal orthodoxy that automatically regards business as an adversary rather than an ally.

What Dukakis has done in Massachusetts, albeit with uneven success, is to use the levers of government, along with state money, to goad business into helping achieve liberal goals -- from rebuilding depressed areas to providing health insurance for all workers. Can this liberalism on the cheap work on the federal level? There is reason to wonder, especially since the resources Dukakis proposes to invest seem so paltry compared with his promises. But he does have the virtue of being the first modern Democratic nominee who can talk of plans and programs without prompting voters to check their wallets.

The self-confidence that the Democrats carry to Atlanta this week is a far cry from the cacophonous clashes and me-too defensiveness that characterized recent conventions. But the placid surface should not mask the reality that the party has embarked on a bold and different course. The curtain has finally fallen on the liberalism that guided F.D.R., Lyndon Johnson and -- yes -- Walter Mondale. Now it is up to Michael Dukakis to define its postliberal soul.