MISSOURI WATCH: WHAT MIGHT BE GANG AFT A-GLEY IN 1997?

Americans can, and do, readily disagree on many issues, but they are of a single mind about last fall's presidential and congressional elections: they didn't change much and resolved even less.

As for Missourians, it is deja vu all over again. The same six statewide officers will be holding forth for the next two or four years and not many incumbents in the General Assembly were kicked out of office. Shucks, we may not even have to print a new Official Manual of Missouri next year.

The evidence from the November referendum seems clear. An incumbent Democratic president is retained in office; Republicans keep control of both chambers of Congress but not by overwhelming majorities; GOP freshmen congressmen from the Class of '94 are now sophomores and are considerably subdued.

So, we are told, our country will be governed from the middle or, as President Clinton has put it on several occasions, from the "vital and dynamic center." The journalists Germond and Witcover, in a syndicated column of mid-December, observe that such a posture "sounds reasonable" and is attractive to citizens who "are tired of extremism and partisanship."

From both the national and state capitals come assurances from both executive and legislative spokesmen that collaboration between the two branches is the future pattern. Citizens are promised a friendlier, kinder government in both Washington and Jefferson City.

If you believe these promises, then stay away from anyone offering shares of the Boonville bridge. The fact is much of the current calm comes from postponing extremely difficult decisions. When the hard-to-crack ones are taken up, rancor can be expected again, at tones that could be of even greater decibel height than previously.

In any case, the two aforementioned columnists observe that tough decisions on vital issues do not come out of the center. They require taking and defending stands. Presidents who have made names for themselves in history have been dynamic agents of change; they didn't mollycoddle. The same can be said of governors in the State of Missouri. Several chief executives in the last half-century have achieved little to nothing of importance. A few even boasted about it.

We are now being told that Bill Clinton has ambitions to make a major historical mark for himself. This could be little more than wishful thinking on the part of the Clintonites. Maybe it's only wish-fulfillment. One thing is certain, the Arkansas Democrat will never make any history books by dodging the hard issues he so assiduously avoided during the campaign.

In another sense, speculations about the presidential temper and congressional Republican counter thrusts could prove to be beside the point. The "best laid schemes," according to the poet Robert Burns, "gang aft a-gley." Unanticipated events could readily scramble both the president's and Congress' deft planning.

What might go "a-gley?" First candidate may well be the economy. Apprehensions about its flimsiness and especially inflated capital values expressed earlier in this column have been voiced widely. Even Alan Greenspan, Fed chairman and general foreman of America's economic plant, has decided to come onstage. Warnings may be timely but most are undated. An exception is the dictum of Richard Band, editor of Profitable Investing, who says the "next 60 days" are "critical." He offers his services for weather-proofing investors' portfolios, but of course there will be a sizable fee.

Mr. Banks' timing is suspect, but not his dramatics. If and when capital values collapse and employment and trade data turn ominously downward, we can be sure that "the economy" will get the first attention of politicos of every stripe. Other matters, even budget balancing and the interminable Yugoslav situation, will compete only for second place.

Jefferson City should not believe it is isolated from the world of recession, particularly as the Beltway tightens its fiscal belt in an attempt to display fiscal maturity, and then what happens to any surplus the state might be counting on for rainy days? It rushes from the payout window just to maintain the old status quo, that's what.

A couple of notes are distressing even now. There are as many industrial job layoffs today as there were at the height of the mid-1980s recession. For agriculture, it means a downturn in capital values including land prices. Farm commodity prices are even now sliding downward and the 1996 farm law offers only minimum shelter. A pause in the economy will only add to existing woes.

If all of these negative events should come about, social tensions could very well inflame to the point of threatening civil order. If you think this observation might be going overboard, consider that among corporate businesses a new wave of downsizing would cancel out jobs of executives and wage workers alike. Even in today's prosperity our country has a sizable, alarming underclass. It cannot be counted on to be undemonstrative.

What really happens when thousands of Missourians no longer have fall-back food stamps? What happens when welfare mothers cannot find minimum-wage jobs after losing welfare benefits? How many deaths among the uninsured must occur before public attention focuses on this societal dilemma?

Let's be clear. These forebodings are only hypothetical. All that can be said for certain is that someday at least part of the water in today's capital values will be wrung out. No one can know whether that means 60 days or 600. Speculation about political moods in Washington and Jefferson City will be moot if the economy turns sour. Only if the boom continues unabated will either Bill or Mel be fondly remembered.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.