YEAR 1 B.C. (BILL CLINTON)

Just a year ago Americans were in an upbeat mood, evidencing expectations that 1993 would be an eventful time filled with change, reform and progress. The hope was that a vigorous new president, representing a party that had been out of the White House for 12 years, would lead the nation into the many, though largely unspecified, changes he had promised during the election campaign.

Last January the economy was said to be on a rebound, which is always a good omen for a new year and a new president. There was even hope that clear decisions would be made in new directions promised in foreign policy. Conceivably, the Bosnia and Somalia dilemmas would be resolved. There were promised designs to attack the perennial federal budget problem, which seems to have become as structurally permanent in Washington as the national Capitol and the White House.

History, if nothing else, should have told us that events fall short of expectations. The several political victories Bill Clinton won have been publicized beyond their significance. At year's end the fiscal conundrum has not changed appreciably, and foreign affairs remain as mixed a bag as before the new president. The economy has remained lethargic most of the year, and at year's end was reported, once again, to be rebounding. The economists are not entirely in agreement.

In America's heartland, here in the middle of the country, the biggest event of the year was not political but an Act of Nature. It was the Great Flood. Any Missourian doubting its devastation need only observe the lakes that have been newly gouged out of corn fields around the flood plain, some of them 50 or more feet deep. Quick recovery is not a term that can be used to describe our state's post-flood period, nor that of our neighboring states within the plain area. Thousands of our fellow Missourians will never fully recover from the effects of this disaster.

If less occurred in 1993 than had been predicted, the explanation does not lie in any lack of enterprise in the White House. Clinton surely is the most take-charge executive since the days of Lyndon Johnson. He is the best informed and most articulate about the minutiae of government since Franklin Roosevelt in his prime. He does not match Ronald Reagan, however, in dramatizing the principles he espouses, and he seems to lack the moral tone often evidenced by Jimmy Carter.

Some attribute part of Clinton's leadership negatives to his election by a plurality rather than a majority. But rarely in a three-candidate race does the winner get such a majority, and the president outdistanced George Bush by a convincing margin. More of a limiting factor, in my judgment, is the lack of a clear consensus among voters as to what policy course to take. If this is correct, it is not surprising that the budget package, adopted by the narrowest of margins requiring the vice president's tie-breaker, was a hodge-podge, with little net fiscal effect.

To be sure the budget contains a modest increase in income tax rates for the super-rich, but this may be more cosmetic than convincing. As economist Martin Feldstein, who was Reagan's chief economic adviser, has observed, unless taxshelter loopholes are plugged, the new rates will not raise much revenue. The president has not begun to face up to the provisions in the tax code that contribute so much to fiscal imbalance and which basically serve to enlarge the market for tax-dodging shelters.

Amid considerable applause, the new president acted early to fulfill his promise to "reinvent government." As far as we can see, no reinvention has taken place, despite the considerable dialogue that occurred among the candidates in the campaign, and whatever benefits are to occur are still somewhere in the future. We don't read anything drastic in the Clinton plan that would effect substantial savings.

Why the president chose to expend so much political capital on the North American Free Trade Agreement is still puzzling. Essentially, what NAFTA does is make it even easier than now for U.S. multinational firms to draw on low-wage Mexican labor to help them in their international contests with Japan and Europe. Missouri agriculture's gains have been exaggerated, in my view, but not the industrial job losses that will occur in some of our state's cities and small towns.

Fiscal and foreign-relations issues are the most difficult any president and Congress must deal with. Neither was clarified in 1993. Health care is next on the agenda, and its outcome could establish the Clinton effectiveness throughout the remainder of his term. The year 1996 is a long time to live with failure.