IS CLINTON DESTINED TO BE ONE-TERM LEADER?

With the visit to Washington, D.C. of our newly elected President, almost all is smiles and good will. We are left to wonder whether, four years from now, a reelected Clinton administration will be celebrating, or whether we'll be watching the departure of another one-term President. The words of a self-described "freshly minted leftish lawyer" offer a sobering and cautionary reminder of the Carter years:

"I came to Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1977, a freshly minted leftish lawyer eager to work in the federal government. Those early months of the Jimmy Carter administration were something of a high-water mark of liberal activism. ... Three years later, I found myself among the crowd in the ballroom of a Washington hotel, waiting for Carter to arrive and concede his landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan. I'd lasted only nine months in government, having bailed out to work for a small political magazine.

"From there I had watched as the best minds of the Democratic Party ran the liberal enterprise into the ground. They had put liberalism on the side of welfare rather than work. They funded housing projects that were among the most hellish places on earth. They defended absurd extensions of criminals' rights. They funneled billions to big-city mayors who gave the money to developers who built hideous, bankrupt downtown malls. They let the teachers' unions run the education department and the construction unions run the labor department. I hadn't wanted Reagan to win; I'd voted for Carter without hesitation.

"But as I waited for him to show up, and looked up at the outgoing Democratic officials gathered on stage, I realized there was not one of these people I wasn't happy to see go."

New Republic senior editor Mickey Kaus, in his new book "The End of Equality."

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And finally, a vital cautionary note from last summer on our new chief executive and his vice president:

They're much more liberal underneath and will prove it when they're elected.

Former South Dakota Senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, speaking of the Clinton-Gore ticket in July, during the Democratic national convention in New York.

To which I can add only that we won't be able to say we weren't warned.