CLINTON, RUSH AND THE NEW MEDIA

Bill Clinton may not be a politician in panic, but he is doing the best imitation of one this town has seen in a long time. That 23-minute tirade against the press, Rev. Jerry Falwell, talk shows and Rush Limbaugh revealed a president close to losing it altogether.

Coupled with the orchestrated Christian-bashing by his aides, Clinton's outburst from Air Force One to St. Louis' KMOX points to a politics of desperation taking hold. We may be on the crest of what analyst Kevin Phillips calls a "megawave" that drowns the Democratic Party in the fall.

"The Republicans and the far right in this country have their own media networks," wailed Clinton. "We don't have anything like that. They have extra organized political action groups that we can't match. ..." Mr. Clinton's rage and frustration is a backhand tribute to conservative exploitation of the communications revolution. The media are being democratized; and the Left is appalled at the result.

It began in 1969, after Spiro Agnew's attacks on Big Media exposed a subterranean sea of resentment toward the liberal press. Newspapers responded by opening up their op-ed pages to conservative writers. By the '80s conservatives could be found on the most popular Saturday night and Sunday talk shows.

Meanwhile, evangelical Christians, disgusted with the news and entertainment fare spewing out of the major media, began taking over radio stations by the hundreds, syndicating their own TV shows, setting up their own bookstores.

By the 1990s talk radio had emerged as the format of choice for thousands of AM stations, and Rush Limbaugh became the most popular radio personality in America. Now, there are syndicated talk shows, network talk shows, local talk shows. While conservatives may dominate talk radio, even many liberal hosts are populist and deeply skeptical of the establishment.

Through radio, conservatives discovered they were not alone. Where once they could rarely hear their views echoed in the press, now they just turn on the car radio. Traditionally a reticent breed, many on the Right have been radicalized in the Age of Clinton. Now, with talk radio a phone call away, the Silent Majority is silent no longer.

Using cable television the Right found yet another way to end-run the networks. First in exploiting the technology of direct mail in the '60s, they appear to be first also in exploiting electronic mail to get their messages out onto the information superhighway.

Establishment publications like Time and Newsweek are no longer even read by many conservatives who prefer their own magazines and newletters, the combined circulation of which is in the tens of millions. And with the advent of desktop publishing, the number of Christian and conservative paperbacks in print at any time has exploded.

Other factors have contributed to the polarization in national politics our president bewailed last week.

With Republicans swept from power in 1992 and the Left now occupying the heights in every institution, from politics to education to the media and bureaucracy, conservatives were free at last. They no longer had to defend Mr. Bush's politics of compromise. They could go over onto the offensive. And with Mr. Clinton's first social initiative being opening up the military to homosexuals, the area inside the Beltway was declared a free-fire zone.

But many of the reasons for Mr. Clinton's beleaguerment are his own fault. Rather than govern as a New Democrat, he and even more so radical aides like Surgeon Gen. Joycelyn Elders seemed to go out of their way to antagonize Middle America.

Homosexuals in the barracks, Boy-Scout bashing, condoms in the classroom, racial balance in public housing, Catholic-baiting, Christian-bashing, inviting HIV-positives to a gay jamboree in New York, defending nutcake art -- why did they do it?

Next, the manifold scandals -- from Whitewater to lurid charges of sexual harassment to alleged insider trading by St. Hillary to swiping monogrammed towels from the U.S. Navy -- suggested a large component of hypocrisy in the claims that the Clintonites represented a higher Politics of Virtue, in contrast to the supposed rampant materialism of Old Dutch's "Decade of Greed."

In lashing out wildly at his critics, Mr. Clinton showed himself to be a politician on the defensive. What Republicans have been slow to recognize, however, is that the entire national establishment -- no longer able to blame Ronald Reagan for its failures -- seems now on the defensive, rapidly losing prestige and respect.

Indeed, America's establishment, like the Soviet Empire, may just be on the verge of wholesale collapse. One good blow may do it.

Patrick J. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist with Tribune Media Services, Inc. He is co-host of the CNN program, Crossfire, and a former Republican candidate for president.