TV Reviews : ‘The People’s Agenda’ in an Election Year

Now that the Clinton affair has blown to smithereens the media’s self-trumpeted plans to focus on the issues in the presidential campaign, you have to wonder if CNN’s big project to do just that--titled “Democracy in America”--has a chance. The first entry in this ongoing effort to raise the stakes, the two-hour “The People’s Agenda” (at 6 p.m. Sunday), depicts a country running so far off the rails and a citizenry so alienated from its public officials that no mere discussion or election may be enough.

Of course, the alienation and social schisms are now so deep, and the shrinking group of voters so unpredictable, that it’s virtually impossible to be certain what “the people’s agenda” actually is. “The people” loathe Congress, except for their own congressperson. “The people” despise taxes, yet demand services. “The people” want leadership, but don’t trust politicians. Can CNN, or anyone, make sense out of all this?

Combining polling with up-close-and-personal stories of residents in Baltimore’s inner city and suburbs, “The People’s Agenda” tries to find the public pulse on 10 key issue areas: jobs, child care, crime, education, health care, unwed teen mothers, elderly care, environmental restoration, racial strife and apathy in the electorate. Almost without exception, correspondents Ken Bode, Art Harris and Brooks Jackson find that federal government assistance is demanded, and wanting.

At the same time, salesman Bob Nozieka complains that “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and it’s just tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, and I’m fed up with it.” What voters may want, the report suggests, is the impossible: A new New Deal that they don’t have to pay for.