DEMOCRATS GRIM PAGEANT : Fratricide Inside the Bastion : Cutting your own deal in good times or being first to the lifeboat in heavy weather leaves little incentive to ponder a community of interest.

There is an old observation among Washington political types that whenever the Democrats organize a firing squad, they array their riflemen in a circle. So while President Bush takes collect calls from mythical mullahs, tells the states to jack up their taxes to fill in potholes and wondrously cruises along with high popularity ratings, the Democrats are shooting at each other.

The spectacle is both unseemly and engrossing. Watching it is like gawking at a particularly grisly highway accident.

The grim political pageants began at the end of the last session of Congress when the Democratically controlled House passed President Bush’s capital gains tax reduction plan. Only a bit of shrewd parliamentary jury-rigging in the Senate enabled Majority Leader George Mitchell to prevent a total rout of the Democrats on an issue that, for any well-ordered party, ought to have been the occasion for a consensus. We have been told recently that “progressivity” concerning taxes will become a rallying cry for Democrats, yet enough of them defected on the President’s plan to line the pockets of the country club set that no party leader would take odds against the Bush plan’s passing.

It is important to bear in mind that the effect of every important modification of the tax code since 1981 has been to make taxation less progressive. To remedy this, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) dropped his Christmas bombshell that would have rolled back the recent increases in Social Security contributions. The Republicans predictably scoffed at the idea. But it was the cold-shoulder of the Democrats that has denied the party one of the most sturdy and reliable cudgels with which to beat Republicans--modifying the most regressive tax of them all. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen grudgingly promised to hold hearings on the Moynihan proposal, but the reception among Democratic leaders was frosty.

Even campaign finance reform, the one issue that has always earned at least the pious lip service of Democrats, has precipitated an intraparty squabble.

The issue concerns a proposal by some Democrats in Congress to require that “soft money” contributions to state party organizations be subject to public disclosure. It is the use of soft money for voter registration activities in California by an organization headed by Sen. Alan Cranston’s son that has surfaced in the context of the investigation of Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating. Democratic reformers have come to regared soft money as little more than a slush fund for candidates and party bureaucrats. Democrats in the states praise the money as a priceless resource for party-building activities. The Washington-based reform Democrats are now at odds with their fellow Democrats in the state capitals.

Then there is the strangely negative reaction to a speech made early this month by Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the majority leader in the House. After ragging the President roundly for his poverty of vision on the great events overtaking Eastern and Central Europe, Gephardt pleaded for economic aid for the Soviet Union. While the expected hoots of derision issued forth from the White House, some of the most negative reaction came from unexpected quarters. New Jersey’s thoughtful Sen. Bill Bradley unloaded on Gephardt, charging that any money sent now to the Soviets would be “poured down a rat hole.” Ted Van Dyk, a highly regarded party intellectual, accused Gephardt of using the speech to advance his 1992 presidential ambitions.

Why has all of this fratricide broken out in the Democratic ranks? Foremost among the explanations is that in a party without a President or an acknowledged standard-bearer (the role Adlai Stevenson played in the party in the 1950s), the views of any Democrat are as good as those of any other Democrat.

The disarray is compounded by the Democrats’ very solid base in Congress--a parochial and individualistic institution in which there are as many agendas as there are Democratic members. Cutting your own deal in good times or being first to the lifeboat in heavy weather leaves Democratic officeholders with little incentive to ponder their community of interest with other Democrats. Because of their congressional bastion, the Democrats do not really view themselves as a party out of power. Thus they have been spared the reflective humility of the truly downtrodden. And it has led them into complacency, self-deception and debilitating family quarrels.