A CONTRACT TO BE KEPT

The political earthquake that rumbled across America last Tuesday, savaging the New Deal Democratic coalition, was remarkable in many aspects. The election's awe-inspiring returns will be pored over by analysts and historians for years to come. In one respect the Republican landslide was unique: the role played by the much-heralded -- and much-maligned -- "Contract With America" of Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich and his swollen band of House Republicans. (The full text of the contract is on the Perspectives page.)

Why did House Republican campaign strategists feel it necessary or even advisable to enter into a contract? Start with the unprecedented alienation Americans feel from their government. A brief survey of American history since the early 1960s to about 1980 would include the Kennedy and King assassinations, the urban race riots, the upheaval and domestic strife of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the first-ever resignation of a president, the oil price shocks, ruinous inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, Soviet expansionism and the invasion of Afghanistan and the election of Ronald Reagan.

No president since Eisenhower had completed two terms in office, and Americans' confidence in their government was badly shaken. Reagan succeeded where so many others had failed He actually restored to Americans a measure of confidence in their government. He left office after eight years more popular than when first inaugurated He saw his vice president elected to succeed him, the first sitting vice president to win the White House in 152 years.

How did George Bush win the 1988 election? More than anything else, Bush's improbable victory rested on the campaign's most memorable line: "Read my lips: No new taxes." With that vivid language Bush reached powerfully into Middle American precincts Republicans didn't usually visit. He triumphed. Less than two years into his term President Bush betrayed the confidence his "No new taxes" line had earned him. He collaborated with his enemies in raising taxes. His glittering Gulf War success notwithstanding, from the moment of the 1990 budget deal on Bush's electoral fate was sealed.

Bush was easy prey for an astonishingly gifted politician named Bill Clinton, campaigning as a New Democrat. Once in office, however, Clinton governed as an old Democrat, veering sharply leftward and staffing his administration's key posts with a quota-driven mentality. The divergence between what candidate Clinton said he would do and how President Clinton governed was as sharp as any in recent memory. To the Bush betrayal Americans saw added the Clinton lies, half-truths and flip-flops.

Combine this with a Congress peppered by indictments, midnight pay raises, a lavish pension scheme, post office scandals, exemption from laws all other Americans must obey, 1,400-page bills that no one had read, and Americans' confidence in their government fell to a new low.

The attempt by House Republicans in this year's election was not just to make campaign promises but to enter into a contract with the American people. The message: Don't take our word for it. If we don't follow through, throw us out.

The strategy worked. In the most sharply ideological election in decades, the side offering the contract trounced Democrats in every section of the country. With the onus on them, the early signs from Republican leaders are good. Gingrich says the 10 bills promised in the contract will be introduced the first day of the new House term in January. Thereafter, each day of House business will begin with the reading of the contract to keep it freshly in mind.

The Republicans had better follow through. Polls this week show 53 percent of Americans favor the formation of a third party, and the same voters who punished the Democrats on Tuesday won't tolerate another betrayal.