Dawn of New Liberal Age? It’s All Wishful Thinking : Politics: Despite the hopeful interpretations of aging ‘60s activists, U.S. society appears headed for a decade of selfishness and self-absorption.

Wishful thinking has characterized liberals for over a decade now: Signs are constantly materializing that the tide has turned and a new era of liberalism is dawning. The 1990 elections are being touted as the latest indicator. I respectfully dissent.

It is dubious, to begin with, whether there ever was a halcyon day in which everyone was liberal. The supposedly idealistic baby boomers, who came of age in the ‘60s, may not have been so idealistic at all--it is not as if draft-age students didn’t have a personal interest in seeing the Vietnam War terminated. And while joining the civil-rights movement might have been inspiring at the time, when civil rights and integration moved north, young, white liberals headed for the suburbs like everyone else.

In short, the premise that there is some golden liberal age whose return we are awaiting is seriously flawed. Nonetheless, it gave many liberals sustenance through the long drought of the ‘70s: Odd-numbered decades, the adage went, were conservative, while even-numbered decades were liberal. Well, that didn’t pan out, so many discovered a new iron-clad rule of U.S. history: Progressive decades come every 30 years (Let’s see--1930, 1960, that means . . . ). It’s thus tempting to see the 1990 elections as the harbinger of this messianic age.

The evidence is that Democrats retained or widened their smashing edge in governorships and state legislatures, gaining the upper hand in congressional redistricting. But this was true in 1970--Richard M. Nixon’s first midterm test--as well; and Democrats didn’t exactly suffer in the ‘80s redistricting.

Another supposed sign of the beating conservatives took was that Democrats enlarged their congressional majorities. That’s true--but by less than the historical average, despite a historically unparalleled freefall in the Republican President’s ratings--which also has nothing to do with growing liberal sentiment.

The final indicator of the allegedly bad news for conservatives is that such troglodytes as Clayton W. Williams Jr. in Texas and John R. Silber in Massachusetts were defeated, while liberal darlings Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York and Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey were reelected.

Of course, Williams and Silber both went out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot, and neither’s conqueror--Anne Richards in Texas, and Republican William Weld in Massachusetts--ran as liberals. In fact, Richards, who really is one of the few progressives in Texas, ran away from such an image; while the quintessential Texas progressive, Agriculture Commissioner Jim A. Hightower, shockingly lost .

As for Cuomo and Bradley, both barely won majorities against non-opponents. Then, of course, there’s Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, whose race-baiting reelection can hardly be viewed as a liberal victory. The news for liberals gets worse from there.

Voters strongly rejected environmental appeals in California and New York. Overall, pro-abortion-rights candidates nationally failed to profit from that issue. In short, the environment and abortion--two issues most liberal pundits thought would be The Issues of the ‘90s, catapulting us to victory--are not proving successful hot buttons. The Republicans have proved, however, that race--at least, in the guise of quotas, a more polite way to raise the issue than the heavy-handed Willie Horton approach--still works for them .

All these other issues are electoral sideshow, however: Voters want to hear what Democrats have to say about the economy and jobs. The reality is that doing anything meaningful on that front will require both reducing the deficit--meaning some tax increases, and cuts in popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare--and some investment in the young and the poor, through education and job training, so that there is some reason for jobs and money to be in America instead of Germany or Japan

That is what America needs. It is what Democrats are inclined to say. And if they do, they will lose.

Ask Bradley or Gov. James J. Florio in New Jersey; ask defeated Gov. James J. Blanchard in Michigan. Ask George Bush and the majority of congressmen what message they’ve gotten from the election, and the answer will be: No more taxes. There is no sign whatsoever that voters will pay for increased spending on social programs of any variety to help the economically disadvantaged, and a lot of evidence that such efforts are viewed as benefiting blacks at whites’ expense--not a particularly popular concept.

Most of all, the ridiculous budget debate revealed one amazing and shameful area of solid consensus: Don’t invest in the young, and don’t touch programs like Social Security for the old. We have become an elder-oriented society, beyond even the long-standing political strength of the senior lobby. The preternaturally self-conscious baby-boomer generation has turned out to be prohibitively self-absorbed. There will be even more spending on the elderly as we go, while racial and generational prejudices combine to provide dramatic underinvestment in kids. We would appear to be a society that has given up on its future.

This should not be a surprise after a decade of orgiastic private consumption; of an elderly President who derided conservation as “running out more slowly,” and of studies finding increased sexual activity among middle-class teen-agers who expected nuclear war to cut short their chances for adult sexual activity.

Like the Vienna Hapsburgs of 80 years ago, we live for a glorious past and a sumptuous, vaguely nostalgic present. Like the Madrid Hapsburgs of 250 years earlier, we spent ourselves into near-oblivion on a combination of overconsumption and armaments that are now of little use to new politico-military realities: We can blow up the world 17 times--but the Soviet empire these missiles are meant to deter is falling apart and we can’t deploy force flexibly enough to deal effectively with Iraq.

What is to be done? We must reduce spending, public and private, relative to saving. That will require not only raising taxes but also cutting federal outlays--something the recent budget morass shows Democrats still resisting. Of course, who could blame them? Republicans, and the public at large, are still resisting the reality that spending cuts must touch the comfortable and not just the welfare class--welfare, after all, accounts for only about 7% of the budget, while Social Security and Medicare are not only the largest but the fastest-growing items. Most of all, the nation must face the difficult task of setting priorities, and choosing priorities that focus on long-term gain--investing in jobs, education, infrastructure and debt payment.

In an age of instant gratification and rapid memory loss, we must discover either large numbers of voters who care more about the future than the present (and more about the nation’s future than their own), or large numbers of politicians whose vision has not failed them. Unfortunately, as recent events proved, there are few of either.