Why Coalitions Fail

By WALTER SHAPIRO

The message from Washington was as sadly unambiguous as the testimony at an A.A. meeting: "My name is the Government of the United States and I have hit rock bottom. After years of denying my problems, I finally cannot function."

The Columbus Day crack-up -- and the week of budget blustering that followed -- can serve as a lasting metaphor for national decline. Picture a government so broke and divided that patriotic tourists in Washington were caught between frustration (closed monuments) and farce (Congress in session). The public reaction was rage, an indiscriminate mad-as-hell roar. The politicians responded at first in typical fashion: posturing and finger pointing in an effort to apportion partisan blame.

Moderate and conservative House Republicans began squabbling among themselves. The issue: whether to back a short-term plan to keep the government running until Oct. 19 or to allow mandatory spending cuts to take effect, which would have forced the furlough of thousands of government employees. (Congressional Democrats settled the argument by passing the interim arrangement with the aid of Senate Republicans.) The President compounded the confusion with daily shifts in his position on taxes. Democratic majorities on the appropriations committees began filling in the blanks of a vague plan to cut $500 billion from the deficit over five years. But they took time to lard their proposals with the usual favors for vested interests, such as imposing a 9 cents per gal. fuel tax on railroads at the behest of the rival American Trucking Associations.

This deadlock of democracy transcends the budget morass and will not be broken with the November elections. The underlying question it raises is stark: Why is the nation unable to govern itself?

< The current crisis is rooted in the anti-democratic conviction that neither political party is supposed to stand for anything. In the quest for what Richard Darman called a "no-fingerprints" budget deal, the Bush Administration and the congressional leadership of both parties carried this flight from democracy to self-destructive extremes. The bipartisan budget summit not only shut out the voters but almost all of Congress from the vital business of setting national priorities at a time of scarcity and economic fear.

That is why -- despite its veneer of banana-republic brinkmanship -- the current congressional revolt is a return to pre-Reaganite tradition. The President's weather-vane vacillation has forced the House to reaffirm its constitutional role as originator of taxation and spending measures. The result: the eruption of the long-suppressed ideological debate over the size and scope of the Federal Government.

In their quest to safeguard domestic spending programs -- and enhance their populist appeal -- House Democrats are readying what they freely call a "soak-the-rich" tax plan. Conservative House Republicans are joining this philosophic fray with a vengeance. "We're not stating the position of the President," says Oklahoma Congressman Mickey Edwards, "nor are we stating what we think Democrats would vote for." There is a smoke-and-mirrors quality to their proposal, misleadingly billed as a tax hike on the rich. But it reflects a supply-side vision far closer in spirit to Ronald Reagan than to George Bush.

How unusual to see liberals and conservatives poised to battle it out on the floor of the House. In contrast, the ill-fated bipartisan proposal was a themeless pudding of a budget. Its guiding philosophy was a cynical renunciation of the long-standing principles of both parties. Much of the criticism leveled against the congressional backbenchers who rebelled against the pact claimed they were motivated by partisan excess. But it can be argued that the authors of the plan were not partisan enough. The White House abandoned the traditional Republican hostility to funding ineffective domestic spending programs. The Democratic leadership surrendered the fairness issue in taxation, socking it to Joe Sixpack's beer bill while allowing the wealthy to weasel out of their fair share of sacrifice.

But as the mutiny on the budget proves, the House is not a home for such bipartisan blandness. That can be a strength, not a weakness. Public skirmishing over the budget stands as much of a chance of achieving a workable compromise as the back-door accord that was rejected two weeks ago. And if Congress fails this time, the voters will know whom to blame at the polls.

In any case, the rebellion by a coalition of liberal Democrats and Reaganite Republicans was in effect a vote of no-confidence in Bush and the congressional leadership's end-of-ideology experiment with European-style coalition government for domestic affairs. Such a caretaker arrangement suited a President with a lilliputian domestic agenda and a Democratic leadership more concerned with sharing power than making tough choices. But it ill served a nation that had for too long papered over its problems.

According to most polls, Americans are willing to pay more taxes if the levies are equitable and if -- this is an important caveat -- the money is well spent. But in the insular world of Washington neither party hears both parts of this message. To date, Republicans have been unwilling to endorse the necessary taxes and Democrats have been loath to revamp the programs. Now that the debate has moved into the open, the voice of the people may finally get through.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Charts

From a telephone poll of 500 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Oct.10 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 4.5%. "Not sures" omitted.

CAPTION: What grade would you give Congress and Bush for their attempts to create a budget-deficit plan?

Who do you think is more responsible for the difficulty?

Which party do you think is more responsible?