Liberal Democrats Plot Return to Power but Face ‘Catch-22’ : Politics: Theorists spell out a wait-and-see strategy, calling for reshaping their traditional beliefs, correcting mistakes and sharpening fresh ideas.

The liberal Democrats who met at the Franklin Roosevelt Library this week to plot a path back to power found themselves face-to-face with a political “Catch-22”: One of their biggest obstacles to regaining the presidency is that they cannot call on the power and prestige of that office to rally support for their cause.

“The longer the Democrats are locked out of the White House, the harder it becomes for them to redefine the party in broad terms of national responsibility,” says Columbia University Prof. Richard Gardner who served the John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter Administrations.

Gardner and the other scholars and strategists who assembled at Hyde Park for a two-day conference on F.D.R. and the Future of Liberalism had no simple solution to this conundrum. But what did emerge from discussions here and interviews with like-minded political theorists and activists in Washington and elsewhere is the outline for a strategy that amounts to political guerrilla warfare.

Following this blueprint, Democrats would allow President Bush to dominate the governmental landscape, while they use the time preceding the next presidential campaign to reshape their traditional liberal creed, correcting old mistakes and honing fresh ideas.

Recollections of F.D.R. at this Hudson River site, where he was born and launched his political career, point up the current Democratic predicament. For it was Roosevelt, using federal power on an unprecedented scale to battle the Great Depression, who defined the Democratic Party as an engine for liberal activist government.

“Franklin Roosevelt stands as the great exemplar of the creative role of American liberalism in the 20th Century,” New Deal historian and Kennedy White House aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. told this conference. “We are still trying to accomplish F.D.R.’s unfinished business.”

That task has become increasingly difficult in the last two decades as racial tensions, the disappointments of the Great Society and the anguish of the Vietnam War stripped away the middle class support liberal Democrats had enjoyed since F.D.R.’s time and led to the domination of American politics by former President Ronald Reagan.

Their weakness was dramatized, pollster Stanley Greenberg recalled here, late in the 1988 presidential campaign when in a desperate effort to revive his faltering candidacy, Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis “reluctantly confessed to being a ‘liberal.’ ”

Liberal Democrats hoped that campaign represented the nadir of their fortunes. But in recent days legislative setbacks for measures reflecting traditional liberal approaches--the rollback of catastrophic health insurance and the defeat of a proposal to boost tax rates for the wealthy--have reminded Democrats of the difficulty of controlling the national agenda without controlling the White House.

All that control of Congress seems to offer them is a rather limited veto power. “The Democrats in Congress might be able to impede Bush from doing things, but Bush doesn’t seem to want to do anything, anyway,” says Roosevelt biographer William Leuchtenburg of the University of North Carolina.

That’s just the point which gives Democrats a potential advantage, claims New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bill Bradley, who is said to be considering a 1992 presidential candidacy. “Bush is different from Reagan,” Bradley argues, because Bush has promised to do more with government than Reagan did.

“Reagan basically said: ‘If you’re poor it’s your fault, and the environment is not really dirty.’

“But Bush has said the opposite. He has said we have to clean up the environment and he has said: ‘I want to be the education President.’

“So we should say, ‘ . . . Mr. President, that’s your goal, let’s measure your performance against your goal.’ ”

Meanwhile, proponents of the guerrilla warfare strategy say Democrats can profitably spend their time between now and the next presidential election by pursuing tactics that, to some extent, cut against the traditional liberal grain.

Redefining the party without the White House as a weapon will be a formidable challenge, acknowledged conference speaker Alan Brinkley, historian at the City University of New York. “But, on the other hand, without making these efforts, they’ll never get the presidency back.”

Here are the major suggestions:

--Break bad habits. In the last 20 years, liberal Democrats have acquired an unsavory reputation for being addicted to raising taxes and increasing spending. The simplest answer, some party leaders say, is simply to quit cold turkey. “As far as I’m concerned, until Bush basically cries ‘uncle’ and asks Congress to help him raise more revenue, there isn’t any reason for Democrats to propose tax increases,” Bradley says.

--Explain themselves better. Another problem for Democrats is their ties to special interest groups, a linkage that severely damaged Walter F. Mondale’s 1984 presidential candidacy. “We are all part of groups, and we all have interests,” points out Rep. James J. Florio, the Democratic candidate for New Jersey governor this fall. “The problem with Mondale is that there wasn’t any effort made to articulate that what we’re talking about is the sum of all our interests, which compose the public interest. If you’re not interested in education or the environment, then how are you relevant?”

--Curb the impulse to give. “The Democratic Party has to find a way to appeal to the public that transcends new benefits that just can’t be afforded,” says Urban Institute senior fellow Isabelle Sawhill. “Even these so-called self-financing schemes can backfire,” she argues, pointing to the uproar from elderly citizens indignant about being asked to bear the cost of additional health care benefits.

It would be politically wiser, Sawhill contends, for Democrats “to show some willingness to curb the growth of entitlements,” such as Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, which would be taken as evidence that they are ready to come to grips with fiscal realities.

--Reinforce middle class values. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman argues that the Democrats should concentrate on new proposals that would tie in to the values of the middle class, and he claims that Democrats can do this and still remain true to traditional liberal principles.

BACKGROUND

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President in 1933 and used federal power on an unprecedented scale to battle the Depression, the heyday of American liberalism began. But, for two decades, liberalism has been in decline. In marking the 50th anniversary of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library this week, liberal Democrats gathered to consider the future of liberalism and seek paths back to power.