JUST WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MISSOURI DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

A knowledgeable political columnist in Washington, who also keeps tabs on politics in our state, recently asked the $64,000 question: Whatever happened to the Democratic Party in Missouri? His inquiry preceded a prediction that incumbent U.S. senator, Christopher S. Bond, would experience little difficulty winning a second term in next year's election, given the absence of a strong opposition challenge.

Well, just what has happened to Missouri Democrats, and just as importantly, why? At this point, despite the best efforts of an energetic and intelligent party chairman, Jefferson City lawyer Gene Bushmann, there is no designated hitter against the GOP pitcher, Kit Bond, and unless the name has been kept so secret that no one knows it, there's nobody waiting in the batter's circle.

At this moment, it appears Bond will succeed himself as a member of the "world's most exclusive club." The Washington journalist wondered why.

We have one explanation, and if you'll stay with us, perhaps we can convince you.

Let's go back a few years to the 1964 election, the one that elected a young secretary of state from the Bootheel as the state's 44th governor. His name was Warren E. Hearnes, and he won a bitter primary contest back in those days tantamount to election by running against what he labeled the Democratic "establishment."

Even then the word had a nasty connotation, implying big money, special privilege and vested interests. Whether Hearnes' accusations were 100 percent on target, he had a valid point. Candidates for governor, U.S. senator and most of the statewide offices were designated by a party elite that seems strangely anachronistic today. A mere handful anointed the chosen few, designating them as the favored candidates for each office, and contributions in large amounts followed from those whose business it is to learn who will win on election day.

We're still not certain Warren Hearnes realized it, but he was part of a greater scheme of things, only one of many anti-establishment candidates who made their way up the ladder in the wild and wooly 1960s. Hearnes, despite almost no media support and a campaign treasury that is laughable by today's standards, convinced enough Democrats that he had a valid point about smoke-filled rooms and succession agreements. His primary victory shocked much of the Democratic Party and all of its leadership, the latter suffering such damage that it only survives today by adopting some of the principles enunciated by Hearnes.

After an unprecedented, uninterrupted eight years under one Democratic governor, the state was ready for a change. Remember, that was 1972, the anti-Vietnam protest period, when national Democrats finally nominated George McGovern just to keep a little peace in the family. Of course, George didn't know he was supposed to restore tranquility and did just the opposite, starting with dumping a favorite Missourian, Sen. Tom Eagleton.

The nominee followed by promising every family $1,000 and implied he would be wiling to go to Hanoi, a la Eisenhower's 1952 pledge to go to Korea, which to the average American was shorthand for capitulation to the Viet Cong. By then, most everyone wanted out of Vietnam, but we wanted to avoid the humiliation of turning tail and running. McGovern was never smart enough to bring that off, and the average U.S. voter suspected as much. So we re-elected Nixon, which gave us the stench called Watergate.

In that same year, instead of St. Louis Democrat Ed Dowd, Missourians elected Bond governor. They re-elected Jack Danforth attorney general. They even elected a state representative, Bill "Full Time" Phelps, as lieutenant governor. It was the first inauguration Democrat Haskell Holman wasn't in the office of state auditor since 1953, having been beaten two years earlier.

With Nixon in the White House, with McGovern having made a travesty of his one and only chance, with Bond in the Mansion and able to name his successor as auditor, a young Springfield lawyer named John Ashcroft, the handwriting was on the wall. Such writing is sometimes indiscernible, and four years later, Bond was booted by "Walking Joe" Teasdale, the most anti-establishment candidate to hike Interstate 70 the state had ever seen. To compound the party's woes, Teasdale was true to his feelings and ignored the party machinery, which accommodated him by falling into a state of complete disrepair. Such skillful neglect is hard to reverse and takes time.

No single event, or even a few, caused the state's Democratic disintegration. It was a combination of one unhappy event followed by a calamity followed by a catastrophe that did the party in, leaving it today with but one statewide officeholder in the most insignificant office devised by man.

For whatever comfort it brings Democrats, Republicans seem to be following in their footsteps. There is a hint here and there in the Grand Old Party that history is repeating itself. No one who chronicles politicians should be surprised.