The Neoliberal Blues

By MARGARET CARLSON NEW ORLEANS

Dynamic capitalism, flexible specialization, individual development accounts, public investment strategies -- was a meeting of accountants under way? No, it was a gathering of the country's top Democrats trying to sound fiscally responsible, tough-minded and pragmatic, to sound, in fact, a lot like Republicans.

The vision thing? The G.O.P. has the luxury of wondering out loud about it. When Democrats search for an overarching philosophy, they seem too dreamy- eyed. The last time liberals had vision -- the Great Society, the War on Poverty -- things didn't work out so well. Candidates like George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis failed disastrously. Harvard's Robert Reich, author of The Resurgent Liberal, says, "I'm sure there are six liberals left in the country, but even I don't know who they are."

Those last six were hard to find in New Orleans last week at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, the organization founded after Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat to make sure that a liberal would never get another chance to blow 49 states in a presidential election. Guided by "neoliberals" like Senators Sam Nunn and Chuck Robb, armed with a raft of fiscally responsible Mr. Goodwrench programs, the D.L.C. is dedicated to yanking the party back to the middle. But neo, the prefix that was supposed to make liberalism safe for Democrats again, has instead made them boring. If a liberal is someone with his feet firmly planted in the air, a neo-liberal is the deadweight tethering him to the ground. Problems liberals were accused of throwing money at -- like poverty, homelessness, urban decay and the underclass -- have given way to two-hour symposiums on "New Strategies for Economic Security: Developing America's Human Capital."

The main goal of the D.L.C.'s strategy was on everyone's mind but on no one's formal agenda: to regain the White House, which means winning back the Southern white males who deserted the party in 1984. What better way to + increase the comfort level of Southern white males than with other Southern white males? Nunn and Robb, Senators Lloyd Bentsen and John Breaux and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton are the D.L.C.'s stars. Dizzy with turning points, raw with fresh starts, wide-awake with new days dawning, their new Democratic Party has blotted out the L word with the M word: mainstream. That is D.L.C. code for letting the constituency it wants to woo know that the constituency it used to depend on -- feminists, gays, blacks and Big Labor -- has lost influence.

The strategy backfired in 1988 when Michael Dukakis, one of the six remaining liberals in the country, won the nomination. Although he learned to appreciate Swedish land-use planning at the Kennedy School, Dukakis was still a Massachusetts Democrat, the worst kind. The dreaded epithet "liberal" stuck no matter how many times he parried with "competent."

That label won't stick on "mainstream" Clinton. Comfortable being whisked off in a limousine in the evening to Antoine's by lobbyists for RJR Nabisco, the quintessential symbol of 1980s corporate greed, he can then preach Democratic values in the morning. Clinton is the perfect front man for an organization that celebrates the work ethic of the common man while relying almost entirely on the Fortune 500 for operating funds. Although Clinton has recovered from his stupefyingly long prime-time address at the 1988 convention, he is still a techno-Democrat, one of a dozen or so who in the absence of political poetry rattle off strategies for a postindustrial, sacrifice-free America.

Political analyst William Schneider predicts that Democrats "won't stop talking about schemes until they come up with a theme and find someone who can make music." The only Democrat who can carry a tune is Mario Cuomo, but he is too liberal to pass the D.L.C. entrance exam, and since his inspiring "City on the Hill" speech at the 1984 convention, he has been reluctant to sing before a national audience. D.L.C. stalwarts like Bentsen, Al Gore and Robb have tin ears. Nunn's libretto -- defense and national-security policy -- seems increasingly irrelevant for a world rushing toward peace. The current season's high-decibel speaker, House majority leader Richard Gephardt, seems too opportunistic as he screeches out a hard-rock message of economic nationalism and a Free Enterprise Corps while bashing Bush for timidity. Bill Bradley is the party's rap star, tapping out his proposals for Third World debt, tax-code overhaul and international monetary reform in monotone.

Jesse Jackson, a D.L.C. pariah, was invited to speak this year. His hymnbook has been anathema to this crowd (whom he once branded "Democrats for the leisure class"), but their plan to stop Jackson on Super Tuesday in 1988 failed so miserably that they may have to face the prospect of Jackson preaching to a crossover audience. In the meantime, with its teeny, tiny programs designed to assure voters that Democrats are as committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of an upwardly mobile life-style as Republicans, the D.L.C. is rewriting the lyrics of the 1960s song: "Ask not what you can do for your country but what educational vouchers, economic nationalism and savings incentives can do for you."