Why we need a second party; when will the Democrats organize?

Before Americans embark on an adventure with a third political party, they might consider the advantages of having a second political party. At the moment, there is only one organized political force in America, and that is conservative Republicanism. The exceptional discipline shown by Republicans in Congress is only the most striking sign of this. Less noticed is the role played by Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour, who is not just a mechanic but also a broker who links policy, politics, public relations, and advertising.

At the grass roots, conservativism thrives through the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association, and assorted antitax and term-limits groups. Conservative Republicans have a loud voice in the popular debate Rush Limbaugh's is the loudest, but he has slews of local allies and imitators. Conservative foundations spend their money With clear political goals in mind, unembarrassed by getting into the thick of partisan fights.

Above all, despite many differences of view, there is on the conservative side the sense that a common project exists and is worth pursuing: the Contract with America symbolized this even before its particulars were formulated. As the conservative writer David Brooks wrote last spring in Commentary magazine, "Even when conservatives differ over items in the Contract, there is built into the movement a sense of solidarity with the effort as a whole."

Among liberals, and among Democrats of all stripes, solidarity has become an antique notion. At the grass roots, the basic institutions of liberal and Democrat hegemony--notably the unions and the urban political machines--are in disarray, as the writer Harold Meyerson will show in a forthcoming book called The Disorganization of America. Pieces of the old coalition have their own sets of concerns and there is no agreement on a common project, other than defeating Newt Gingrich. There is little unity among Democrats or on the center-left on the desirability of reelecting President Bill Clinton.

Indeed, elements of the old coalition spend almost as much of their time attacking each other as in going after their Republican foes; witness the polemics between the "New Democrats" at the Democratic Leadership Council and the labor-oriented liberals at the Economic Policy Institute. These fights may not have a huge resonance outside Washington, but they are an important sign of the intellectual discord in the party as a whole. And, of course, there is the disjunction between the "centrist" strategy being pursued by the president and the seemingly more traditional strategy being pursued by congressional Democrats, especially in the House.

The contrast between liberal, Democratic disarray and conservative, Republican coherence has an impact well beyond the quest for electoral victories. It also radically redefines the country's political agenda. The quest for sane, "centrist" policies on the budget, welfare, crime, and other issues is reasonable enough. Mostly, the country wants to reform, not dismantle, government. As a rule, Americans are impatient with ideologues and don't think in sharply ideological terms.

But where is the "center" going to form if the debate is so one-sided--if a clear line of argument on the one side, backed by substantial resources, confronts poorly organized cacophony on the other? The center just keeps moving toward the side that's organized and vocal. A perfect example of this is the welfare bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in the Senate. Dismantling the entire system of federal guarantees for poor children would have been considered radical and dangerous even a year ago; most Republicans were against it. Now a bill that does just that is labeled "centrist" simply because the alternatives are even more radically skewed to the right.

As a result, most Senate Democrats and the president himself are going along with something they would have condemned with words such as "heartless" just a few months ago. Had Democrats been able to reach agreement on a welfare reform bill last year, they could themselves have defined "the center." Their failure to find solidarity behind a practical measure thus had a huge substantive cost here, as also on health care and political reform.

Clinton's effort to set himself up as a "centrist" battling Republican "extremism" has helped him recover some ground in the polls, partly because a lot of what the Republicans are doing is not very popular, and partly because the strategy distances him from congressional Democrats, who aren't very popular themselves.

But this strategy only fitfully addresses the larger problem the president and the Democrats confront: that the country has no idea of what an affirmative Democratic program would look like and little confidence that Democrats could agree to pass such a program if they ever decided what it was. The strategy also seems to accept that the political initiative will remain in Republican hands not only in Congress--that's inevitable through 1996--but also at the level of ideas. Instead of defining the middle ground of politics, this approach risks becoming a chase for a center moved ever rightward by a skilled and well-organized ideological machine.

The risks for Clinton himself are twofold: If stalling the Gingrich Revolution becomes his central purpose, many voters may decide that Colin Powell could do that job as well or better. And if Clinton is reelected, how will he govern when the Republican party is dominant, the Democratic party is enfeebled, and third parties keep threatening to be born?

E.J. Dionne, Jr., is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Post (this column [C] The Washington Post). He is the author of the forthcoming: They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon & Schuster).