KINDER'S COMMENTARY: WILLY-NILLY BILLY AND HIS BUDGET PLAN

President Bill Clinton's about-face last week on the budget -- he announced his own, 10-year plan that would supposedly balance it -- triggered anguished cries from the still-dominant left/liberal majority of congressional Democrats. Consider the acid remark of liberal Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., skewering this president where it hurts most: on his reputation for inconstancy: "I think most people have learned that if you don't like this president's position on an issue, just wait a couple of weeks and it'll change."

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri was in full cry against the president too. Still, not even these liberal congressional dinosaurs could top the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a guest on CBS' "Face the Nation" last Sunday. Jackson now claims that America's two-party system has collapsed because the Democratic Party has split in two. "There's the DLC," Jackson said, "and then there are the Democrats."

The DLC Jackson is referring to is the Democratic Leadership Council, a moderate party group formed in the wake of the party's crushing presidential defeats the 1980s. The DLC is determined to wrench the party back toward the center. A former president of the DLC is one William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton's brilliantly run 1992 campaign was a DLC-inspired effort, as he presided over a couple of widely publicized executions, went out of his way to stiff Sister Souljah and chattered about his plan to "end welfare as we have known it." All these were signals to Middle American voters and Reagan Democrats that he was a "New" -- read non-liberal -- Democrat.

Most DLCers watched in despair, then, as Clinton took office, staffed his cabinet through the most blatant racial-, gender- and ethnic-based quota system ever, embraced gays in the military as his first policy decision and fought for a government takeover of America's health care system. This was Hillary Rodham Clinton's agenda. It is relentlessly left-liberal at a time when America was moving visibly and unmistakably rightward.

Ah, but the Clinton White House, which polls more than any administration in American history, can read a fundamental shift in the American electorate too. Thus we have Hillary, who has sponsored appointments such as former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, and abortionist Dr. Henry Foster to replace her, and backs federal funding of abortions, now taking pains to be photographed with Mother Teresa. It was great to hear Mother Teresa lecturing an uncomfortable first lady about the "great evil" of abortion by citing her to the 25th chapter of Matthew, with its wonderful passage "... whatsoever ye have done unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

It says something about relative priorities that Hillary Rodham Clinton, a hero to America's left/liberal, radical pro-abortion feminists, would so covet a picture alongside one of the greatest moral figures of our time that she would endure such a lecture. The Clinton White House has shifted into the re-elect mode, and that goes for the Missus too. Gone, at least publicly, is the radical left agenda. In are pictures with saintly, pro-life nuns.

President Clinton's budget cave-in likewise gives the game away: We're all budget-cutters now. The week before, facing House Speaker Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire, Clinton even admitted the unmistakable truth: Medicare has to be reformed and will be bankrupt in seven years if it isn't. Democrats of the Gephardt/Obey variety had planned to demagogue that one all the way to next year's elections, only to hear their own president cutting their legs off.

This highlights an interesting result of last year's elections. The Democratic seats that fell last November tended to be the competitive, swing districts where either party needs to compete for persuadable voters. Those Democrats who survived last Nov. 8 tended to come from solid Democratic seats where the old-time, liberal religion retains an appeal it has long since lost everywhere else. Thus as southern Democrats flee to the GOP, the shrunken House Democratic base is more liberal than ever before. It is this headlong march away from a liberal Democratic congressional center of gravity that President Clinton, his eyes on next year's elections, has now joined.

The president's abrupt turnaround on the federal budget deficit is vivid illustration of this new public face for an administration that has worn so many. And the anguished cries of congressional liberals are but a foretaste of more to come. Expect a presidential campaign from the Rev. Jackson. After all, for a fellow like him, running for president means three squares a day, people sticking microphones in your face and lots of jet travel. Decent work if you can get it.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.