COLUMN ONE : Sensing a Loss of Leadership : Amid prosperity, many worry that issues that could spell disaster aren’t being tackled by Congress or the Administration.

From the Bush White House to the predominantly Democratic halls of Congress, the federal government is engaged in a retreat from leadership, sidestepping an array of politically difficult long-term problems that shadow the nation’s future.

On the economy and education, on health care and poverty, on the deteriorating infrastructure of roads, bridges and basic facilities, on a growing list of other festering issues and budding crises, Congress and the executive branch have repeatedly understated the magnitude of problems and settled for partial responses instead of seeking effective long-term action.

Those stark judgments, shared by a substantial number of officials in both parties, stand in sharp contrast to the rosy litany of progress that many Washington politicians recite in public: unemployment at rock-bottom levels, double-digit inflation banished, record numbers of young people in college, the economy creating thousands of new jobs each month.

Yet even some inside the Bush Administration have begun to worry that today’s politically palatable policies will prove inadequate for the future. What stirs the politicians’ concern is the failure of national leaders to take political risks and mount comprehensive attacks on problems that threaten the quality of life in the next century.

Similar apprehensions can be found among business leaders, ordinary citizens and scholars and other experts across the land.

“The challenge facing the nation’s leaders today is to take some very strong initiatives to prevent some of our serious problems from turning into disasters,” said James David Barber, a Duke University professor and author of several books on the presidency. “But in terms of initiatives,” Barber said, President Bush is not in the game.

The country faces “a failure of political leadership,” said Felix G. Rohatyn, the prominent financier who headed the government effort to restructure New York City’s finances during the 1970s. The country’s leaders “are intelligent, they’re sincere and they’re patriotic and they know what the problems are,” Rohatyn said. But, he charged, on many of those issues they are avoiding strong action.

Unquestionably, enormous unmet needs clutter the landscape, many of them draining money away from investment in future productivity.

Obligated to spend billions of dollars to bail out the savings and loan industry, for instance, the government will soon be called upon to spend billions more to dispose of commercial nuclear wastes--a problem successive presidents and Congresses have neglected. Similarly, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner says $80 billion will be needed just to repair decaying highway bridges.

Moreover, profound structural dangers wait over the economic horizon. Productivity growth is barely half of what it was in the 1950s and 1960s, for example; but the richest country in the world does not save enough to support its own level of investment in productive enterprises--relying instead on large trade deficits and foreign borrowing. Similarly, though the nation continues to lag in high-technology industries, its high school and college students are measurably weaker than those of other developed nations in math, science and other subjects--raising concern about the future competence of the American work force.

And the staggering problems of the poor are well known. So are the costs to the larger society of ignoring the problem. The gap between rich and poor is now greater than it has been at any time since the end of World War II. One out of every five American children now lives in poverty; among blacks, the ratio is one out of every two children. The United States now has the highest infant mortality rate in the western industrialized world.

‘No Lack of Ideas’

“There is no lack of ideas, all that is needed is the political will,” declared a blue-ribbon commission assembled by the Ford Foundation to study the problem of poverty and possible solutions. The commission said it could not “overstate the shortsightedness of ignoring America’s social challenges.”

“Drugs, teen-age pregnancy, poverty, homelessness, violence--individually or in combination, these factors threaten the well-being of children and families and threaten to overwhelm the systems designed to serve them,” Greg Coler, health secretary for the state of Florida, told Congress last week.

A costly new federal program is not the cure for every need, such critics are quick to say, but they argue that--whatever the ultimate solutions--little progress on fundamental problems is possible without strong national leadership. And trumpet calls to decisive--possibly painful--action are seldom heard, they say.

In the view of Paul Krugman, one of the nation’ leading economists, who teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the problem is that: “Ours is an age of diminished expectations, an era in which most Americans appear willing to accept far less for themselves and their children than anyone would have imagined only 20 years ago.

“So, too, with economic policy.

“Policy makers simply let problems drift and the public goes along, at least so long as there is no immediate, palpable pain: no double-digit inflation, no severe recession, no conspicuous decline in living standards,” Krugman said.

For many, that may be an unduly pessimistic assessment. But there is surprisingly widespread agreement that, good as things may be for many people now, too little is being done about basic problems for the future.

At the grass-roots level, for example, a new Times Mirror poll found that President Bush retains an enormously high approval rating of 74%, yet a large majority of those surveyed said they do not think he is doing a good job tackling the country’s long-term problems.

Gets Low Ratings

Specifically, by large margins they rated his performance no better than poor to fair in tackling the long-term problems of the economy, health care, education and the environment--the latter two, fields in which Bush promised to excel.

Similarly, in answer to a question at a recent breakfast session of The Times’ Washington Bureau, 29 officers and directors of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and their spouses were unanimous in indicating they believe both Congress and the Bush Administration have failed to seriously address the nation’s most deep-seated problems.

Republican pollster Richard B. Wirthlin said part of the reason for the absence of strong leadership in Washington today is that “traditionally leadership is most tested and revered in times of crisis and if ever there was a period when crisis doesn’t describe the situation, this is it.”

“It’s an interesting time with people fairly well satisfied with the here and now, but they still are very much looking over their shoulders and expressing concern on the longer-term dimensions of social problems,” he said.

Wirthlin, who has done polling for both Ronald Reagan and Bush, said that never during the past two decades he has worked in Washington has he “seen so little going on.”

Among Washington politicians, says Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), it is now accepted as fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans can demonstrate leadership to tackle the most critical domestic issues. Why? “Because the government is broke.” Federal budget problems are unquestionably difficult, critics concede, but they find the government’s response to the challenge troubling nonetheless.

Return of ‘Malaise’

One senior Administration policy maker, conceding that long-range domestic issues are getting short shrift, likened the Bush presidency to that of Jimmy Carter when Carter--in the third year of his term--declared that the country was suffering from a “crisis of confidence” and that progress was being stymied by a lack of spirit, which others labeled a “malaise.”

“It’s that malaise business that Carter spoke about, but this time the malaise is on the government’s side,” the Administration official said. “There are more similarities between Bush and Carter than you would think. They both appear to think that this leadership ‘thing’ is overrated, and they believe in fixing problems--resolving matters--but no big themes.”

While Congress must share a substantial measure of responsibility, the primary burden of leadership and initiative in the federal government rests with the President.

Far more than any member of Congress, the President can command the nation’s attention--using his office as “a bully pulpit,” in Theodore Roosevelt’s words. Nor can Congress match the President’s resources for developing programs and stimulating public debate.

That is particularly true now, when the Democrats have solid majorities in both the House and Senate but lack the unity and strong leadership that would be required to seize control of the national agenda.

Veteran GOP political consultant John D. Deardourff said that in Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine and House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington “you have essentially two new leaders who are trying to find their way and be effective. They are basically cautious, not risk takers, and neither is a commanding public figure.”

More than that, Deardourff said, “It would take an extremely strong personality to be an effective leader in the face of a President going nowhere.”

“Don’t forget Bush was a junior partner in the Reagan revolution,” Deardourff said. “Anyone anticipating major initiatives would be misreading him. He has no passionate commitments to any problems. He could be viewed as a guy who squandered a great deal of personal popularity at a time when the nation faces serious problems. But the Bush White House is a careful reader of the polls and so far they don’t see people upset about these problems.”

Attitude Changes

Some political strategists believe public attitudes may be changing more significantly than Washington officials realize.

During the late 1970s, said political consultant Kevin Phillips, national leaders who were wedded to the Great Society tradition of activist government missed signs that the public was fed up with big government. Many of those leaders lost their jobs when Reagan was elected.

Now, said Phillips, “the idea of activist government is coming back” in the form of demands for greater action on the environment, increased support for medical insurance and child care and re-regulation of industries ranging from the airlines to cable television. “The politicians in the United States more often than not are lagging whatever public trend is bubbling up,” he said.

The President, for his part, freely acknowledges the limited role he is playing in attacking long-term national problems. He argues that this is the prudent and proper approach.

“I won’t be able to match the highest bidder on federal funds for education or federal funds for drug rehabilitation or federal funds for the homeless, whatever it is,” Bush said shortly before he took office, “but that does not mean that I don’t care. No, it doesn’t.”

Others in the Administration say the President’s more limited role is desirable on philosophical grounds, as well as being in tune with the mood of voters.

Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner says Bush and Reagan, “and at least a minority of Congress have weaned people away from the idea that all solutions lie in Washington, D.C.”

“Ronald Reagan and George Bush and Sam Skinner believe that much more can be done, and done better, by state and local involvement rather than relying on federal funding and federal answers,” Skinner said, pointing to the California gas tax initiative as a example of greater state effort.

In the same vein, Richard L. Lesher, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says he is “sick and tired of the Bush Administration being criticized for the new federalism of pushing responsibility for taxing and spending back to the states. Our members concur in the new federalism,” Lesher declared. “A lot of people think the best time is when Congress is on vacation and the executive branch is not doing too much.”

Haley Barbour, a Mississippi Republican official who served as Reagan’s political adviser and now is an unofficial Bush adviser, says: “George Bush for many purposes is a third-term President. He wasn’t elected to change things. His mandate was one of continuity and improvement, fine-tuning.

“That’s not to say there are no problems, but in the broad sense, people like the direction the country is going in,” Barbour said.

It is also true that in two areas Bush has broken significant political stalemates and brought forward movement on major problems: drugs and clean air.

Clean Air Issue

By getting out in front on the issue and then throwing his weight behind a compromise, Bush played a leading role in pushing through the Senate the first major strengthening of federal clean air laws in more than a decade. Senate Democratic leader Mitchell also played a key role, winning praise from both sides of the aisle for his handling of an issue that for years had produced only stalemate.

Democrats have also taken the lead in pushing for a federal role in child care, addressing a problem that arises from major changes that have occurred in the economy and the American family.

On illegal drugs, when Bush took office last January, there was no consensus in Washington on how the problem ought to be tackled. There was constant squabbling and sniping in Congress and the executive branch; everyone, it seemed, had his own solution. Through hard work and persuasion, Bush--and his drug czar, William J. Bennett--forged widespread acceptance of the overall strategy.

Most innovatively, that strategy argues that the fierce old debates about the relative importance of supply-side and demand-side solutions was misdirected. Instead, it contends that law enforcement measures aimed at reducing the supply of drugs succeed also in reducing the demand for them.

It is with this logic that the Administration has won congressional support for budget proposals that devote the bulk of spending to supply-side approaches--an approach previously scorned by Democrats. While most of the burden remains on state and local government, Bush’s fiscal 1991 budget contains $10.6 billion for anti-drug programs, a 69% increase over the last Reagan budget.

In a far larger number of cases, however, the scale of the response to a major long-term issue offered by the Administration and Congress has been significantly smaller than the problem. Some examples:

--Economic competitiveness: Americans are not saving enough to generate the investment needed in new production facilities if the nation is to compete with Japan and others at home or abroad.

In response, Bush proposed to cut the tax rate on capital gains and institute a tax-sheltered “family savings account.” But most economists believe a capital gains tax cut would not encourage significant new investment, and his family savings account, which would provide tax breaks not when money was deposited but only when it was withdrawn, is not expected to generate much new savings.

--Education: Bush, who has repeatedly set the goal of being “The Education President,” has praised the Head Start program as a model of successful government action to solve the problems of low educational achievement among children born in poverty. He has pledged eventually to provide enough money to allow every eligible child to participate in a Head Start program.

For the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, Bush has proposed an extra $500 million for Head Start, a 36% increase over the level now being spent. But, critics note, even with that increase, roughly a quarter million 4-year-olds will be unable to attend Head Start programs because of a lack of federal money.

And the Head Start increase was the dominant element in Bush’s education strategy: Math and science education and other problem areas got far less attention.

Bush drew applause from the nation’s governors by holding an education summit with them last summer. Out of the summit grew a set of lofty educational goals, such as a pledge to end illiteracy by the end of the century; there are 20 million to 30 million functional illiterates in the country.

But there was little in the agreement to accomplish the goals.

“I applaud the President for holding the summit,” said Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, who has headed sweeping education reforms in his own state. “But Head Start is still not fully funded and funds haven’t been provided in other areas where the government traditionally has been a player. There ought to be more of a national role.”

Roger Porter, presidential assistant for domestic policy, counters that by every objective analysis, the government is pouring more resources into education than ever before. “What is needed now,” he said, “is to look at how resources are being spent.”

--Health Care: The Administration says the government cannot afford to expand its two major insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid. Congress voted two years ago to make Medicare cover catastrophic health care costs, but when the elderly taxpayers who were to finance the program rebelled, Congress repealed the program a year later without addressing the problem that remains.

Meanwhile, Americans used to look on the masses of countries like Italy and Spain as poor and sickly but average citizens in Italy and Spain now live longer than the average American. While the United States can still take pride in its world leadership in medical science, the delivery of health care to its people is spotty and constrained by soaring costs. And 37 million Americans have no health insurance.

--Housing: While estimates of the nation’s homeless population vary widely, a substantial number of low-income people are without homes because they cannot afford the rent in cities with tight and expensive housing markets. From the end of World War II until the beginning of the Reagan Administration, the federal government participated in a large program of building or subsidizing low-income housing; Reagan drastically reduced that program.

“At the very minimum,” an adequate program to meet the nation’s housing needs would cost an additional $20 billion a year, said Maria Foscarinis of the Washington-based National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Some analysts might argue for a somewhat smaller figure, but federal housing assistance programs currently are budgeted at only about $10 billion annually.

Poverty Problems

Beyond bricks and mortar, so serious have the social problems of the underclass become that many business leaders are growing alarmed.

The Ford Foundation commission, in a moderate, measured report on what needed to be done, recommended a $29-billion program dealing with such matters as prenatal and baby care, nutritional aid, Head Start, day care, job training, drug treatment, the minimum wage, earned income tax credits and mandatory health insurance programs.

Proposals for action on that scale collide with budget constraints, competing interests and other obstacles. In the present political climate, there appears to be little enthusiasm for cutting the Gordian knots that result.

Some Democrats think the Reagan Administration’s program of tax reductions and increased defense expenditures, which almost tripled the national debt from $794 billion in 1981 to over $2 trillion in 1988, was deliberately calculated to reduce the funds available for domestic programs.

But the result has been not less government but too little “responsible government,” contends Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who added:

“You can’t do as we did in the 1980s, deliberately create a protracted fiscal crisis as a political strategy, making it impossible to get anything done.”

In economic matters, the Bush Administration took steps to confront two of the most pressing problems it inherited from Reagan: the savings and loan crisis and Third World debt. In the first case, its portrayal of the size of the problem quickly proved too optimistic. In the second case, many analysts say, it opted for short-term political advantage instead of longer-range economic benefit for the nation.

The long-term costs of the S&L; bailout, originally estimated at about $200 billion to $250 billion, continue to mount, with the Government Accounting Office now estimating that the full price tag over 33 years will go as high as $500 billion--most of it interest costs that will be imposed on the next generation of taxpayers. One official working on the bailout said the final cost could go as high as $600 billion.

Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady has decided that the political risks of tackling the S&L; problem again before this November’s congressional elections are too high. So the Administration does not plan to propose any additional reforms until next year, and the delay will only add to the ultimate cost.

Similarly with the Third World debt dilemma.

Won’t Bail Out Banks

Most economists believe that writing off the uncollectible debts owed to major U.S. banks by Latin American governments would free those countries of a crushing burden, stimulate trade and thus redound to the economic benefit of the debtors and the United States. But writing off the debts would require federal aid to offset the banks’ losses, and the Administration does not want to be accused of bailing out the banks on the backs of taxpayers.

On the environment, as on education, Bush’s positive rhetoric has prompted critics to measure his promises against his performance. They have found him wanting, except on clean air.

He came into office pledged to act against the threat of global warming, for instance, then took a hesitant approach and questioned the scientific evidence.

The Administration has supported studies and a series of U.N.-sanctioned steps toward a global warming treaty. But at a meeting in the Netherlands, it joined Japan and the Soviet Union in watering down a proposal calling for stabilizing the production of “greenhouse gases”--chiefly methane and carbon dioxide--at 1988 levels by the turn of the century.

The promised global environmental conference at the White House is scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday. But the session’s agenda has been roundly criticized for focusing on economic projections and computer modeling rather than abatement.

Contributing to this story were staff writers Rudy Abramson, John M. Broder, Edwin Chen, William J. Eaton, Sara Fritz, Sam Fulwood, Melissa Healy, Douglas Jehl, Norman Kempster, David Lauter, Doyle McManus, Stanley Meisler, Ronald J. Ostrow, Tom Redburn and Robin Wright.

CONCERN OVER LONG-TERM PROBLEMS

A Times Mirror poll found that Americans are concerned about President Bush’s handling of long-term problems, even though they give him a 74% approval rating. Here is how those surveyed answered when asked how they would rate the job Bush is doing in dealing with the following long-term problems:

Excellent Good Only Fair Poor Economy 5% 34% 46% 11% Health Care 2 18 42 29 Education 5 27 43 18 Environment 4 28 39 21