The Political Interest

By Michael Kramer

Later this week in New Orleans, Bill Clinton will interrupt his nomination strut to address the Democratic Leadership Council's annual convention. In a real sense, Clinton will be going home. The widespread disenchantment with his candidacy and the tailoring of his pitch to appeal to the liberal activists who control so much of the Democrats' primary process have obscured the centrist notions that define his effort, the nothing-for-nothing hard-edged nostrums he is resurrecting to use against George Bush. The intellectual origins of these themes, and many of their specific applications, can be traced to the D.L.C. and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute -- which is not surprising, since many of the same people responsible for those prescriptions have been intimately involved with drafting Clinton's tactical and substantive playbooks. Who are these people, what do they believe, and what is their beef?

Born in frustration after the drubbing of Walter Mondale in 1984 -- and modeled on the conservative Republicans' successful takeover of the G.O.P. -- the D.L.C. seeks to rescue the Democratic Party from its left-leaning tilt. As put by one of its founders, Senator Sam Nunn, "We Democrats can't continue to blame bad candidates, bad tactics and bad luck." The goal, as stated by Clinton, who chaired the council for a year and a half until he resigned an hour before his campaign began last August, is to "develop a new middle ground of thinking on which someone can not only run for President but actually be elected."

At the beginning, orthodox Democrats regularly and inaccurately derided the group as a collection of "Southern white boys" who too often failed the traditional litmus tests by voting "wrong" on issues like aid to the Nicaraguan contras and affirmative action. No one called them racists to their face, but an ugly, derisive undertone invariably accompanied the attacks. Two efforts eventually won respect for the D.L.C., which now has chapters in 27 states, 19 full-time staff members and a $2.5 million annual budget. The first, a scathing post-1988 election analysis, elaborated the nation's new political arithmetic. "By the old math," says Al From, the council's president, "Dukakis should have been elected in '88. He carried 85% of the Democratic vote, more than Jimmy Carter when he won in '76. But there were -- and still are -- fewer national Democrats than a decade ago, due largely to the fact that many middle-class voters see the party as their enemy."

Since politicians fear retirement above everything else, the council's electoral inquiry was received as a jolt of reality therapy -- and when the frightened asked, "What do we do now?" the D.L.C. was ready with a litany of remedies. Proceeding from the assumption that the Democrats' "fundamental failure is intellectual" (a view that faults the message rather than the messengers), the Progressive Policy Institute, under the direction of Will Marshall, has published a series of provocative papers that Clinton, for one, has adopted almost wholesale.

The council's signature proposal is national service, the notion that all students who want a college education can have one if they are willing to repay their loans with a period of work in community jobs. An early D.L.C. supporter, former Representative Barbara Jordan, had articulated the view that rights and privileges should carry reciprocal responsibilities; national service is the logical and perhaps best expression of that creed. "It is neither a liberal nor a conservative idea," says Marshall. "It's a synthesis that takes from both."

Another element at the core of the council's ideology concerns welfare, specifically the neo-Republican idea that workfare schemes should be favored and that an ultimate threat is necessary. As Clinton says, "If we help train you and you still refuse to work, then no more welfare . . . We will do with you. We will not do for you."

To the extent that such notions anger Democratic interest groups, the D.L.C. could not be happier. "The best way to gain credibility with skeptical voters is to tell them things they don't want to hear," says Doug Ross, the council's leader in Michigan, who helped design the strategy that won the state's primary for Clinton last month. "That's why we had Bill speak about race relations to white blue-collar voters in the Detroit suburbs, why he pushed workfare at a black church in the inner city, and why he defended free- trade agreements before an audience of unionized autoworkers in Flint."

It is possible and perhaps likely that Clinton's non-policy problems will hobble him in the fall. But his rise and that of Paul Tsongas -- as compared with the rejection of Tom Harkin's New Deal liberalism -- proves that the council's essential thrust is triumphing. John Maynard Keynes once said the real difficulty in changing the course of any enterprise lies not in developing new ideas but in escaping from old ones. For Democrats so long shut out of the White House, the D.L.C.'s philosophy represents the best hope for escape. Victory may elude them in 1992, but at least the Democratic Party's future is clearer.