PERSPECTIVE ON THE ELECTIONS : The Paradox of the Common Pool : The results suggest a continuing emphasis on taxation as perhaps the key issue in national politics.

Repeatedly we were told that the voters were in a mean and restless mood, eager to turn the rascals out. But when the votes were counted, it seems the percentage of rascals returned to office was higher than ever. Only one incumbent senator was defeated, and very few congressmen.

The result is paradoxical, suggesting that something may be wrong with the normal explanation--the claim that campaign funds, paid staff and mailing privileges give incumbents high name recognition and therefore a big advantage. If incumbents were truly unpopular, presumably their very familiarity to voters would be a disadvantage. Voters would turn against the local scoundrels whom they knew and opt for less well-known challengers.

Something else seems to be at work, and the institutional structure of Congress suggests what it is. The principal activity of the national legislature is redistributing about $1 trillion. Congress may therefore be compared to a common pool, from which 535 legislators enjoy siphoning privileges. They are constrained only by the need to team up with colleagues to form majorities. (You join me on a bill to benefit my constituents, then I’ll do the same for you.)

The key feature of this arrangement is that the fiscally conservative legislator who declines to join in the logrolling succeeds in hurting his own constituents but does not contribute to the nation’s well-being. He merely leaves more money for others who are less shy about siphoning from the common pool.

Voters therefore rationally support their own congressman (provided he joins in the general logrolling, which almost all do), but the electorate will also seek to restrain the growth of the overall common pool, or budget. This task cannot be performed by any one legislator, only by a President who promises to veto spending bills and pledges “no new taxes.” This is a formula for divided government, with big-spending Democrats controlling Congress and a fiscally conservative Republican in the White House. Which is what we have mostly had in recent decades.Some think this explanation too “Marxian,” implying as it does that most people tend to vote for economic reasons, even if they don’t know that is what they are doing. But it does predict that voters would tend to support term limitations. Such constraints, together with normal congressional voting, enable the electorate to vote both for their familiar local figure and “against” (or at least to serve notice on) all the others, who represent other constituencies. That is what has now happened in Colorado and California. Predictably, the trend toward term limits will spread across the country.

A poor showing by Republicans is also to be expected, given the President’s abandonment of his no-new-taxes pledge--the key role assumed by the executive branch in a system of rationally divided government. The defeat of Republican governors in Florida and Texas, two states where Bush had campaigned hard, was a clear repudiation of the White House.

The results also suggest a continuing preoccupation with taxation as perhaps the key issue in national politics. Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, nearly upset, was clearly hurt by continued fury at the state’s governor, Jim Florio, who brazenly raised taxes soon after being sworn in. In the campaign just ended, Bradley preserved an awkward silence on the subject, but in his chastened victory speech he acknowledged that voters perceive higher taxes as requiring them “to work more for someone else.” In Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate, John Silber, relished the role of outsider, but it was his Republican opponent, William Weld, who campaigned for lower taxes. Unusual for a Boston Brahmin, Weld won.

One congressional result is unexpectedly satisfying: the election to Congress of the socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders at least upholds the valuable principle of truth-in-labeling. His platform: millionaires and multinationals should pay their “fair share,” so that more money can go to “environmental and educational programs.” This raises the interesting question: How do run-of-the-mill liberal Democrats differ from Sanders?

In general, the results do not auger well for President Bush or the GOP. Republicans continue to dwindle away in the House of Representatives. Their best hope is for Bush to recapture the tax issue. But what can he say at this stage? No new taxes, and this time I mean it? It will sound no more convincing than his increasingly shrill denunciations of Saddam Hussein.

In the approaching presidential race, it remains only for a venturesome Democrat to wrest the tax issue completely away from the GOP. Bradley is the candidate who could do it--he understands the issue; now he has had a personal taste of its power. If he ran on a low-tax platform, Bush would be hard-pressed to stop him.