Demos Gain in Sound-Bites but Don’t Have a Lot to Say

WASHINGTON —  Democrats have reason to celebrate this month. They nominated a woman to run for California governor and a black to challenge Sen. Jesse A. Helms in North Carolina. They watched a front-running anti-abortion candidate for Iowa governor go down in flames. Each result gave the party a big opportunity to expand its base in November.

Back in Washington, it has been a different story. Gorbymania is gone and a sullen Congress is back in town. President George Bush is again jousting with Congress over the mushrooming federal deficit.

Democrats also quietly observed this month an anniversary that few wanted to recall: the June, 1989, resignation under fire of House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas). That downfall, which paralyzed Capitol Hill for much of last year, has apparently left few visible wounds for his party. Like so many recent miseries for the beleaguered Democrats, however, his departure has brought a new pile of problems and self-doubts.

When Wright left town, many Democrats breathed a deep sigh of relief. They no longer had to bear the burden of his ethics-tarred reputation, of his cozy connections to Texas savings-and-loan swindlers that have forced Democrats to share the blame for the S&L; mess. Democrats were also grateful they would not have to contend with Wright’s Lone Ranger leadership style, in which he often made impulsive decisions or forced members to make tough choices.

Under the leadership of Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), who also acquired his post in 1989, Democrats have more-telegenic spokesmen who can speak in sound-bites for TV interviews. And their leaders are capable lawmakers willing to roll up their sleeves to identify specific problems and tasks and achieve those goals. But it has become embarrassingly clear to congressional Democrats that they lack an agenda to unify themselves or rally the nation. When they have tried to promote some issues, they have either been so split internally that their message was blurred or they have been preempted by the President.

Consider: The House and Senate this spring have both passed broad clean-air bills, to which many lawmakers have devoted months of work. But Democrats have been dogged by divisions, barely papered over, between environmentalists led by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and the party’s organized-labor wing led by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). The likely result is that Bush will get much of the credit when he signs the law later this year.

Similarly, on the child-care bill, House and Senate Democrats are working to resolve differences between competing versions approved in the past year. One reason party leaders have not sounded a fanfare is that their committee leaders working on the bill have failed to agree among themselves about the bill’s rationale. Should child care be a hodgepodge package expanding current federal programs, such as Head Start and school aid, emphasizing low-income children? Or should it be targeted more toward tax credits for middle-class families trying to balance demands of home, school and workplace? Whatever the answer, it is not likely to do much for Democrats who wanted to cast their lot with “the family.”

Democrats were gloating last fall that they had Bush and the GOP on the run following the Supreme Court decision that approved restrictive state laws on abortion. But this year appears to be different: Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), the GOP nominee for governor, has lined up with the pro-abortion-rights side. And three of the hottest Senate Republican challengers--Patricia F. Saiki of Hawaii, Lynn Martin of Illinois and Claudine Schneider of Rhode Island--are House members who, like the incumbents, favor abortion rights. (Granted, other Republicans, such as Clayton Williams, running for Texas governor, either oppose abortion or have made sexist comments. But the Democrats’ message has been blurred by their own anti-abortionists, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey.)

The Supreme Court last week handed down a decision that has caused more Democratic division. In overturning the federal flag-protection law, the court reminded Democrats of how the Pledge of Allegiance issue dogged their 1988 presidential campaign. Both Foley and Mitchell repeated their earlier vow to oppose any proposal abridging the Bill of Rights. It remains to be seen whether they will prove more skillful than was Michael S. Dukakis in minimizing the political costs.

The Democrats’ biggest frustration has probably been Bush’s continuing high popularity in public-opinion polls. For that, they have themselves partly to blame, simply because they have done so little to present a coherent message that describes his shortcomings.

In their search for more effective attacks on Bush, some Democrats have recently targeted his handling of the S&L; disaster. They contend that he has become vulnerable both because of his initial failure to propose a sufficiently large financial package to resolve the problem and the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute the wheeler-dealers aggressively.

“The biggest case we have for 1992 is that we flushed the peace-dividend down the S&L; toilet, because of the Bush Administration,” said a Democratic strategist. He contends that the public’s short attention span will cause most voters to forget about Democrats’ misdeeds that fueled the crisis.

Congressional Democrats are also seeking ways to force Bush to address the S&L; issue in the coming budget summit. Many Democrats are convinced they will be able to force the President to tell the public that the economy has gone sour or that he won’t be able to keep his no-new-taxes promise--or both.

The success of this confrontational strategy is uncertain. But an important signal that many Democrats have growing doubts is the persistent talk in Capitol lobbies that the party’s Senate and House control will be in serious jeopardy in 1992 because of the combined impact of Bush’s reelection, House redistricting and the expected large number of retirements.

“There is a lot of fear in the cloakroom,” a House Democrat said. In this political environment, the Democratic imperative has increasingly become individual self-protection. That is generally not a recipe for resurrecting a party.