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                                                                                THE POLITICAL INTEREST, Page 45

The Brains Behind Clinton


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.