WASHINGTON WATCH: IS PRESIDENT CLINTON IN TOUCH WITH U.S.?

Bill Clinton kicked off the final month before mid-term elections lambasting Congressional Republicans in a televised news conference last Friday. Arguing that the country is on the right track, he blamed Republicans for upsetting his legislative agenda by adopting a strategy to "stop it, slow it, kill it or just talk it to death."There's some truth to what the president said. In the last several weeks, Republicans -- with the assistance of many centrist Democrats -- put a road block in front of the legislative ambitions of the president and his liberal House and Senate cohorts. The watershed came with the crime bill, where the public's disdain for Clinton and Washington pork-politics-as-usual emboldened the GOP to draw a clear line in the sand. Even though the bill slipped through, Republicans realized they could stand up to the president with little political fallout. In fact, by standing up to Clinton, their popularity went up. Promising to enact better legislation after the mid-term elections with a new, more conservative Congress, GOP leaders subsequently took aim at any bill with Clinton's name on it. George Mitchell, the retiring majority leader of the Senate, called this a "scorched earth strategy.""The Republicans want to tear down the institution to inherit the rubble," said Mitchell.

The problem for Mitchell, Clinton and the incumbent Democratic leadership is that a majority of the American people don't seem to mind the institution being torn down. Almost all agree that Congress can and should do better. The sentiment is grounded in disgust with both parties. But underlying that disgust is a belief that Bill Clinton just doesn't understand how to govern. While liberals blame him for his constant bumbles, including missing a historic opportunity to reform health care, the rest of the nation questions his policies not only in application but in content.

Clinton-style health care reform is the starkest example of the president's disconnect with the majority of America. But the list abounds. From reversing himself on the middle class tax cut to the largest tax increase in history to sending troops to Haiti, the people have discovered that the "New Democrat" they elected to the presidency isn't all that new after all. Republicans understand Clinton's fundamental disconnect with the American people, which is why someone like Texas Sen. Phil Gramm not only admits working during the last month to obstruct anything on the president's agenda, he takes credit for it."Saying no is sometimes a very positive thing," said Gramm last week.

The other problem for the president, who always seems to be in campaign-mode, is that he has blamed someone else for his mistakes for so long that only the most die-hard partisans still listen to him. Even those in the national press, a majority who pull for Clinton, are tired of his constant attacks on others. Chris Matthews, one-time chief aide to the late Democratic icon Tip O'Neil and now a newspaper columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, was asked in this month's Washingtonian magazine why so many journalists are turning tough on Clinton."Because we root for the guy and he lies to us!" said Matthews. "We root for him again, and he lies to us again!"Here's a suggestion to the president. Stay off the campaign trail. Outside of Chuck Robb in Virginia, most Democrat candidates don't want you in their state anyway. Instead, focus on the problems in the world. So far, Haiti hasn't been a disaster, but you still don't have an exit strategy. Find one. Meanwhile, your response to Saddam Hussein's dangerous provocation on the Kuwaiti border has been appropriate. Stop the hemming and hawing, however, and make sure that there are no questions about your intentions. Let the dictator know -- loud and clear -- that any more shenanigans on his part will result in a disproportionate response. Then if he crosses the line, bomb away. On the domestic side, start laying the groundwork for GATT. This will be your immediate domestic challenge after the elections.

By focusing on the issues and not sullying his name any further in the blame game, President Clinton has an opportunity to show he can govern. By dealing competently with what are likely to be explosive situations in Haiti and Iraq, he may even gain respect. Failing these, he seals the demise of his party.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.

From the New York TimesSunday, Oct. 9Headline: Gridlock's Political PricePolls and pundits alike predict a mid-term Democratic defeat so catastrophic that the Republicans could end up controlling not only the Senate but also (for the first time since 1954) the House of Representatives. The polls are preliminary and the pundits fallible, and when we all wake up on Nov. 9 the Democrats, though shaken, may still have slim majorities. But if things do turn out badly, it will be partly because Bill Clinton and the Democrats have failed to persuade the American people that they can govern as a party.

This failure of governance is rarely mentioned in the litany of causes for the Democrats' discontent. The most common suspects are: a nagging, nationwide sense of economic discomfort. The elusive but present ghost known as the "character issue," raised anew by Whitewater. Doubts about the president's managerial skills and his bumbling White House staff. A generally sour national mood and the growing rebellion against incumbency, more damaging to Democrats simply because there are more of them than there are Republicans.

But the fact that these assembled Democrats could not manufacture a satisfying product in Clinton's first two years may be more important than the other reasons combined.

Clinton, it should be recalled, rode to the White House on the premise that a Democratic president and Congress could get things done. There were flaws in this premise. The Democrats themselves have never been models of unity. Nor could Clinton claim a numerical mandate; nearly 60 percent of the electorate voted for somebody else. Nevertheless, Americans were invited to expect the end of gridlock. That was Clinton's single most powerful argument against the gathering ineptitude of the Bush administration and the seductive togetherness offered by Ross Perot.

The president and his party did not deliver. Again, there are any number of explanations, all plausible, none satisfactory.

First, he expended huge amounts of his political capital on a few matters of great moment: successes like the budget agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, failures like health care reform in 1994. That made orphans of lots of other worthy legislative enterprises. Second, though an instinctive compromiser, he did a surprisingly poor job of involving the opposition in his legislative program, not least health care.

Third, the Republicans, never really invited to the clambake, threw sand everywhere. Make no mistake: the Republicans cannot possibly run as the party of creative and helpful suggestions on the basis of Rep. Newt Gingrich's jerry-built "contract" with the voters, which is little more than the voodoo economics of the Reagan '80s.

The Republicans must shoulder the additional burden imposed upon them by Gingrich and Sen. Bob Dole, whose ugly behavior in the waning days of Congress helped kill campaign finance and lobbying reform.

But Republicans cannot be held responsible for whatever harm the Democrats suffer in November because their participation was never part of the original promise. If the voters are sour, and they are, it has more to do with Clinton's failure to consolidate the majority they handed him and the failure of the party to unify itself.

Democrats helped defeat his health care initiative. A Democrat, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, at one point in his career an offbeat candidate for the presidency, opposed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The churlish behavior of Tom Foley, the House leader, did much to cancel Clinton's pledge to end Washington's culture of influence-peddling. Western Democrats joined with regional Republicans to sabotage many of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's most promising environmental initiatives.

The final proof of the Democrats' own gridlock-feeding disunity was their inability to rally all their troops for the two critical cloture votes on the lobbying bill.

In the end, it was difficult for a self-professed "New Democrat" to deliver when so many old Democrats stood in his way. This must surely have been a painful surprise for a hopeful fellow like Bill Clinton. But his dilemma is no worse than the voters', who have before them equally unappetizing bunches of Foley Democrats and Gingrich Republicans. This is a gloomy prospect, promising not just gridlock but rising public frustration at the majority party's inability to govern even when it has the keys to the Capitol and the White House.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.