DEMOCRATS DRAW LINE OVER ISSUES KEY TO GOP

This week saw the unfolding of the quadrennial convention of the world's oldest political party.

This definitely isn't your grandfather's Democratic Party. For all recent efforts to move the party to the center, the Democrats remain indisputably the party of government -- and Big Government at that.

We refer any doubters to the fact that the largest interest group represented, comprising one of every eight delegates, is in a militant teachers union: the far-left National Education Association, or their cousins in the American Federation of Teachers.

Add in the other public-employee unions that increasingly dominate an AFL-CIO headed by arch-liberal president John Sweeney, and you have about one of every four delegates.

These are, of course, American citizens who have every right to participate in our electoral process. Still, their goals -- growing government, higher taxes and blocking real education reform such as school choice -- place them squarely at odds with most American taxpayers, especially including private-sector union members.

Many rank-and-file union members know this. No wonder Republican nominee Gov. George W. Bush is consistently polling about 40 percent support among Sweeney's rank and file who for so long represented the Democratic base. Bush is bidding fair to regain the Reagan Democrats his father so fecklessly lost.

Included in convention viewing preceding President Clinton's speech was one of the oddest moments in the history of American political television.

For an interminable three or four minutes, TV cameras fixated on the president as he walked down a narrow corridor inside the bowels of the convention hall on his way to the podium. Here is how TIME.com described it:

"He took up several minutes of network prime time being filmed walking down a hallway and soaking up cheers, leaving approximately five minutes to say something nice about the man trying to succeed him."

It was a Mussolini Moment, clearly of a piece with what followed: Clinton's relentlessly self-aggrandizing and narcissistic speech.

That speech was masterfully delivered in the finest Clinton style by the man who has so dominated American politics in this Age of Oprah.

Among other speeches, one by Gore's daughter clearly stands out.

A beaming, 20-something Karenna Gore Schiff, nominated her father and clearly marked herself as a future star should she harbor political ambitions of her own.

Next to her performance, that of vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman is largely forgettable. Sadly, this good and decent man will be remembered this week mostly for dropping, under extreme pressure, those sensible positions that made him laudable in the first place.

Then there was the vice president's speech Thursday night. Mr. Gore made clear our point that his is the party of government, the party of the state.

When these Democrats invoke the private sector at all, it is to bash big corporations. For example: demonizing the drug companies, makers of miracles.

And from the Democrats' point of view, there can be no partial privatization of Social Security for 23-year-olds so that they have a real account that they own. It is thus no surprise that Gore opposes broad-based tax cuts for all. Gore's tax policy would bestow favors on one or another targeted group through tax credits. This is more of the you-get-a-tax-cut-if-you-clean-your-room minimalism of the Clinton-Gore years.

Good enough, then. There are real and stark policy differences between Republicans and Democrats in this election. Bring on the debate. The stakes are real -- and high.