Babbitt, Bradley in Forefront : New Breed Calls for Basic Democratic Party Changes

Pondering their party’s future after landslide defeats in two straight presidential elections, many Democrats are counting on an economic downturn and President Reagan’s eventual retirement to revive the old Franklin D. Roosevelt coalition that made them the dominant force in national politics for more than four decades.

Increasingly, however, a new breed of Democrats is making itself heard, arguing for fundamental changes in the party’s priorities and political alliances.

“Clearly, the new leaders are coming to the front,” says Ted Van Dyk, president of the Center for National Policy, a Democratic think tank. “There is no unanimity among them. But they do have in common a willingness to question old premises and to look for new solutions that may not be tied to ideology.”

Among the new leaders, two are staking out particularly strong claims for the party’s attention--Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona and Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey. Not only do they typify the new breed in their willingness to question old relationships and call for new priorities, but each represents a major political reality that the Democrats must face if they are to regain national power.

Babbitt speaks for the West, a region fruitful for Democrats at the state and local levels yet barren of votes for Democratic presidential candidates for the last four decades. And there is a growing realization in the party that it cannot regain its once-dominant position without attracting voters from outside its old bastions in the industrial Northeast and Midwest.

Bradley’s authority springs mainly from his leadership on tax reform, an issue widely regarded in both parties as perhaps the hottest political idea of the 1980s. It may become a litmus test of the Democrats’ willingness to change because many of their traditional constituency groups have a stake in the present tax system.

The contest between old and new is far from settled. Despite Walter F. Mondale’s 49-state rejection last November, many of the doctrines he espoused are still championed by such prominent Democrats as New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy--though even Kennedy, the preeminent symbol of coalition politics, recently called for a reappraisal of the party’s positions and its relationship with organized labor and other interest groups.

Initiative Seized

But for the time being at least, the initiative in the struggle over the party’s direction has been seized by the proponents of change.

To some extent, they are following the insurgent pattern of Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in his unsuccessful 1984 campaign for the presidential nomination. But the new faces have the advantage of being unscarred by that campaign, which left a residue of bitterness toward Hart among some Democratic Party leaders.

Besides Babbitt and Bradley, these fresh voices include Govs. Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

In the months ahead, all of them will be heard from. But Babbitt and Bradley stand out in this group because their particular backgrounds and beliefs seem well tailored to deal with the broad questions their party must confront.

“The long-term future of the party,” says Bradley, “is not served by an endless parade of satisfied constituencies as much as by an overall message that is in the general interest.”

And, says Babbitt, “This mule, having been whacked over the head twice, is now ready to listen.”

The brie was on the coffee table, the Chardonnay was on the bar and the Hollywood Hills living room of Patti and Ken August was crammed with young, upwardly mobile Democrats. Perched on a bench, lean and intense, Bruce Babbitt was in his element and in full cry.

“The Democratic Party has become a cathedral of orthodoxy in which true believers endlessly reiterate sacred scripts with no admissible debate,” the Arizona governor declared. “But a lot of people in the back benches of the cathedral are not listening to the sermons.”

As a self-described backbencher, Babbitt, 46, says that he has decided to “walk out of the church for a while and nail my theses on meeting halls around the land.” It is a message well designed to appeal to persons like the young professionals in the Augusts’ living room, members of a group called the Lexington Club, who are searching for fresh reasons to maintain their faith in the Democratic Party.

Won’t Seek Reelection

To be free to reach such audiences, who many believe hold the key to the party’s future, Babbitt--though still popular with Arizona voters--announced last month that he would not seek reelection as governor in 1986 or run for the Senate seat that will be vacated by Republican Barry Goldwater.

And, without ruling out a 1988 campaign for the presidency, Babbitt insists that he is mainly motivated by the desire “to define the Democratic agenda for the next 10 years.”

Babbitt, the scion of a wealthy Arizona mercantile family, studied geophysics in England and law at Harvard, experiences that contributed to a cerebral rhetoric and reserved demeanor more reminiscent of an Eastern professor than of a free-wheeling Westerner.

But it seems certain that whatever contribution he makes to the Democratic agenda will be shaped mainly by his political experience in his native region.

“What happened in the West,” Babbitt explains, “is that the shift to the national Republican Party took place much faster than elsewhere. In the early ‘60s and ‘70s, Democratic candidates at state and local level began to understand these changes and to adjust their liberal principles to the realities of that change.”

Tying Benefits to Need

One aspect of that adjustment was an effort to reconcile the traditional Democratic precepts of social justice with voter demands for fiscal restraint. Out of Babbitt’s experience with balancing those forces has emerged what he considers to be “the most powerful concept” he advocates in the national debate over fiscal policy--tying the benefits of federal entitlement programs to economic need through “a universal means test.”

Whereas many federal social programs--including Social Security and Medicare--now pay benefits regardless of financial need, Babbitt would consider individuals’ economic circumstances.

To help meet the current deficit crisis, Babbitt would break with Democratic doctrine by cutting off Social Security cost-of-living adjustments to those earning more than $35,000 a year. He would also increase co-payments by persons in that income bracket when they receive treatment by doctors under Medicare.

Approach Alarms Liberals

This approach alarms many liberals, who fear that cutting middle-class benefits from such programs would undermine support for the programs among middle-class voters.

Babbitt contends that that argument amounts to saying that “in order to compel support for those things that ought to be done, you must bribe every citizen into compliance by a giant potlatch of redistribution,” referring to the ritual in which affluent members of some Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest give away many of their possessions to less fortunate tribesmen.

To shrink the deficit further, Babbitt favors a modified version of the Treasury or Bradley tax-reform measures, an approach most Democrats are still eyeing with caution. But Babbitt would hike the proposed rates so as to boost the net proceeds to the Treasury.

“We can’t go through this eternal ratcheting down and destroying these social programs,” he contends. “We have to increase revenue.”

Babbitt and his admirers believe that the value of his experience in the Western Democratic school of hard knocks goes beyond fiscal prudence and gives him special qualifications for advising the party on how to extend its reach to constituencies and issues it has tended to neglect.

In seeking office in Arizona, first as attorney general in 1974 and then as governor in 1978 and 1982, Babbitt could not depend on the urban interest groups that have been the bulwark of the Democratic party in the North and Middle West. Like other Western Democratic politicians, he had to forge his own coalition around farmers, small businessmen and young professionals.

Different Concerns

Moreover, when Babbitt entered politics, the concerns of Western voters were different from those of the rest of the country, Robert Allen, a Phoenix lawyer and longtime Babbitt confidant, points out. “The dominant themes in the West have been growth and financial expansion,” Allen says. “So he dealt with issues that the country as a whole is just waking up to today.”

Babbitt has a fistful of schemes for transferring the formulas that worked for him in Arizona onto the national scene.

Among them: to aid small and middle-size businesses, he would strip away many of the tax benefits available to huge companies and make the corporate income tax progressive; to help farmers struggling to recover overseas markets, he would not only shy away from protectionist measures but would lower existing barriers to trade.

In foreign policy, Babbitt advocates what he calls “the heavy metal argument” in Central America. “Every time you (Nicaragua) begin building bases or installing equipment that has strategic importance to the Soviets, and which is not really related to internal defense,” he contends, “I believe we have a direct national interest which does warrant contemplating the option to use military force.”

For all of the effort that he and other new voices intend to make in the next three years, Babbitt is enough of a determinist to believe that the struggle between the new-breed Democrats and what he calls “the Kennedy-Cuomo crowd” of liberals may be decided by the spin of the economic cycle.

If there are “hard times” in 1988, he says, “we all become irrelevant. This process of dialectic and change is immediately off the table if there is a major recession. Then, the traditional bearers of liberalism will rise triumphant.”

Parts of Sen. Bill Bradley’s speech to a recent New Jersey Democratic convention in Atlantic City were borrowed from an earlier talk he made to no less a non-Democratic organization than the state Chamber of Commerce.

“You know,” an aide told him afterward, “you didn’t deliver a real political convention speech.” Replied Bradley: “I’ll take the rap for not throwing out red meat to the audience and for not bashing Reagan. I know what I’m doing.”

What the 41-year-old Bradley is trying to do is establish his own agenda for the future, combining the assurance of equity and compassion, long the hallmarks of his own party, with the promise of economic growth--which has been largely responsible for the recent success of Republicans.

Bradley--a 6-foot-5 Rhodes scholar from Princeton, an Olympic gold medalist and veteran of the New York Knicks--won a second term in the Senate last November with 65% of the vote. When campaigning, he tends to shy away from some of the crowd-pleasing Democratic slogans of the past and is criticized by some fellow Democrats for that. But Bradley says that that is a price he is prepared to pay to broaden the appeal and enhance the credibility of his case for new ideas.

Struggle for Tax Reform

“This will be a battle between the general interest and the narrow interests,” Bradley says, referring specifically to the struggle for tax reform, which is the centerpiece of his still-emerging political framework. That battle, he says, presents Democrats with the opportunity to rid themselves of the special-interest stigma that helped bury their White House hopes last November.

Bradley views tax reform as essential to paving the way for a rational public policy for dealing with economic growth and social change.

“There’s no policy to embrace change in the Republican Party,” he contends. “There’s only kind of a creative destruction. Which means that, overnight, industries are no longer competitive because of disastrous macro-economic policies, the high price of the dollar and automation. And the people who work in those industries are left on their own.”

He argues that the Democrats need to provide an approach that makes adjustments for social disruption created by the changing tides of international trade and technology. “You can get the efficiency of the market while at the same time maintaining the sensitivity and caring of the Democratic tradition,” Bradley says.

“You’ve got to have a way to get the assent of people to the change that is going to affect their lives.”

But, he acknowledges: “That is certainly not going to be easy.” And some people question whether Bradley, with his aversion to rhetoric and flamboyance, is really up to the job.

Sequential Ideas

“Bradley seems to come up with ideas sequentially rather than simultaneously,” said Rutgers University political science professor Ross Baker, who thinks that this trait could limit the senator’s ability to develop a comprehensive vision for the nation’s future.

Moreover, because President Reagan has endorsed tax reform in principle and Republican Rep. Jack Kemp of New York has introduced his own version of income tax simplification, the Republicans threaten to co-opt the idea--and the political credit.

For his part, Bradley says that he would be glad to get Republican support, so long as it does not mean sacrificing what he considers to be the key principles of significant tax reform: no increase in the federal defict, no tax hike for lower- and middle-income groups and the lowest possible tax rate break for the most taxpayers.

On foreign policy, Bradley prefers to compare his views to those of President Reagan rather than to the views of other Democrats. “I’ve opposed the President on the MX missile, on covert assistance to Nicaragua, on the production of the B-1 bomber,” he says.

Backed Reagan

“I supported the President on deployment of the Pershing missile, on Grenada and on aid to El Salvador. Sometimes I support him, sometimes I don’t.”

As for Reagan’s so-called “Star Wars” proposal for a space defense against nuclear missiles, Bradley likens it to depending on Willie Mays to catch every fly ball hit to the outfield. “Even Willie Mays made a error sometimes,” Bradley argues. “And here, an error means destruction of the country.”

Still Bradley favors spending money on space defense research. “Science being science,” he explains, “who knows what you’d come up with?”