COLUMN ONE : Washing Our Hands of Politics : Polls and interviews show voters are angry at politicians, bewildered by the issues and disgusted with the choices. At stake may be democracy itself.

In the central Wisconsin town of Wausau, Kim Freund, 32, voices a lament that is reverberating through the land in this troubled election year: “Politics just stinks,” she declared. “It’s disgusting.”

Sometimes the unpleasant topic of politics might intrude upon a social gathering, said Freund, a mother of two. “But usually someone will say, ‘Let’s not talk about it.’ ”

This is the story behind the stories of the 1992 campaign--an onrush of anger and alienation that has led to stunningly low voter turnouts, an avalanche of ballots against candidates rather than for them, howling challenges within both major parties and a hunger for new heroes that could make a White House bid by Texas businessman Ross Perot the most serious outsider’s quest in years.

For a small portion of the public with no hope at all, the anger has exploded in violence and looting, suddenly pushing the woes of the inner city high up on the national agenda. However, a much larger number of Americans share a different version of dismay, one that was shaping this year’s political campaign long before the Los Angeles riots: The economic and political system that succeeded for them and their parents seems to be failing.

Now, many citizens of different income levels are struggling to retain confidence in the democracy they viewed as a beacon to the world. Americans’ faith in institutions, from Congress to the local schoolhouse, has skidded to levels not seen since the 1970s, if ever, according to national surveys. A sense that government is paralyzed by such chronic problems as the budget deficit and health care costs further fuels the frustration and gloom, according to interviews with voters and experts on public opinion.

“The last good President we had was Truman,” said Phyllis Lenkner, 61, who owns a dairy farm with her husband in the western Pennsylvania town of Greenville. Truman left office in 1953.

Today’s state of government and politics she describes in one word: “deplorable.”

Or consider this, from the Rev. Cecil Murray, at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles: “The only thing that black Americans--and all Americans--can legitimately say to politicians is, ‘Let’s start over.’ Cynicism and back-room politics have made us a people that mistrust and distrust everybody.”

Overall, a series of weather vanes points to a large and growing, if unfocused, disenchantment with government that is rumbling across the nation’s political landscape, from blighted urban neighborhoods to tidy suburban enclaves. Elements of anger, apathy, disappointment and frustration all are in the volatile mix, which some analysts believe could have major consequences in the short run and in the long--undermining democracy itself.

A few of the signs:

* An extraordinary number of votes aimed in protest or cast with regret. Seven in 10 Americans wish other candidates were running for President, polls show, a sentiment that is propelling Perot’s expected independent quest for the White House. In Florida, six of every 10 votes for Republican insurgent Patrick J. Buchanan were cast in protest, as were three of every 10 for Democrat Paul E. Tsongas in New York.

* Disappointment in leaders that spreads across party lines. This is a noteworthy shift from the post-Watergate bitterness that focused on Republicans, or the anti-Democratic Party feelings that spread during the Jimmy Carter Administration, from 1977 to 1981.

The graphic symbol is Congress’ check-bouncing scandal, widely taken to mean that politicians are “greedy or incompetent or both,” said Tom W. Smith, a pollster for the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

* A striking lack of faith in the basic institutions of American society. A meager 12% of the public has a lot of confidence in Congress--an all-time low--according to the Los Angeles Times Poll. But the unhappiness extends to schools, television, banks, the Supreme Court and other institutions, surveys show.

* A widespread abandonment of voting. Of nearly 30 states that have conducted primaries so far this year, at least 10 have recorded declining participation--with much of the plunge on the Democratic side. (And those figures understate the trend, because about half the states have no comparisons available yet.) In New York, turnout among registered Democrats tumbled to 27%, down from 45% in 1988, according to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Overall, the percentage of adults who vote in presidential elections has dropped 20% since the 1960s, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonprofit research organization. One in two adults who were eligible to vote skipped the 1988 presidential election altogether.

* The share of Americans who believe the nation is moving in the right direction--20%--now approaches the record lows of the early 1970s, the era of oil embargoes, gasoline lines, rising inflation and Watergate, surveys show.

“On virtually every measure, people are as unhappy or more unhappy than we’ve ever seen them,” said Larry Hugick, a vice president of the Gallup Organization in Princeton, N.J., which recently reported that six in 10 Americans don’t believe the presidential candidates have good ideas for solving the country’s problems.

Is It That Bad?

Are things all that crummy? Recent rioting shows that the patience of urban have-nots has frayed perilously in recent years, a time of declining opportunity for the unskilled and a time of accelerating urban woes.

But other reference points--the Soviet Union has vanished as a frightening rival, national economic news has improved somewhat--suggest, at least superficially, that conditions aren’t so bad for many other Americans.

Grumblings are only natural after a lengthy recession, some analysts point out. And bashing politicians is an American tradition. By this reckoning, the media have over-dramatized the anti-politics mood, and it will fade quickly when an economic recovery picks up steam.

The reputed anger is “cotton candy,” said Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “You bite into it, and I’m not sure how much is there.”

An important clue to the public’s cynicism may come from the practice of modern politics, a dubious art that often seems driven more by opinion polls, money raising and manipulation than heartfelt leadership or a genuine connection with the public.

The newer, media-savvy breed of politicians reminds one scholar of the 1956 movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” in which sinister aliens attack a small Western town and produce replicas of local citizens from giant pods.

‘Pod People’ Invasion

But the look-alikes have no souls. “Over the years, politics has been taken over, gradually, increasingly, by the pod people,” said John J. Pitney Jr., an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former staffer on the Republican National Committee. The pod people “know voters not as neighbors, not as friends, but as demographic variables, as figures on a computer screen.”

In the world of the pod people, political parties have lost much of their influence to television. Candidates’ popularity tends to be more fleeting, with fewer loyal party members to count on, observes Martin P. Wattenberg, a political scientist at UC Irvine. The public, meanwhile, spreads its ire across the political spectrum, rather than aiming it just at the “other” party.

“Now they don’t have anybody to blame--so they blame everybody,” he said.

Anger at the Media

The media are a target of hostility as well, accused of focusing their bright lights on minor misdeeds rather than illuminating the serious issues that bedevil government. At the same time, public expectations for official conduct have risen dramatically, along with the tougher scrutiny from television and newspapers.

In the Ozarks community of Mountain Home, Ark., Virginia Poe is troubled by chronic squabbling between the White House and Congress, negative campaign advertising, the media’s emphasis on “who slept with whom” and the influence of big business on government.

“I’m ashamed of us, that we’re not smart enough to do something” to tackle the nation’s problems more effectively, Poe, 75, said.

The retired secretary said she sat out the 1988 presidential election because “there just wasn’t a choice” between the candidates, George Bush and Michael S. Dukakis. “I was guilty. I’m ashamed of myself that I didn’t at least cast my vote and let them know that I’m here.”

But Foster Warren, 80, a retired auto mechanic who lives near Dayton, Ohio, sees a benefit to the intense media coverage. “People aren’t dumb about politics like they used to be,” he said. “(Years ago), candidates could barnstorm through here and sound good, and you’d vote for them. Now we’ve got the media covering it better, and you can sit and draw your own conclusions.”

Other Public Worries

Some of the public’s concerns transcend politics: The U.S. economy may be causing anxiety in ways that cut to the core of the nation’s identity, causing anxiety and resentment among the poor. As one key example, years of stagnating wages, particularly for blue-collar jobs, have left millions to wonder if their children will enjoy the rising standard of living that once was assumed to be an American birthright.

There also is a growing question of fairness. America’s wealth is being shared less equally than it used to be, reversing a trend that dates back at least to World War II.

Poverty and wealth both spread in California in the 1980s, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data, which documents a widening chasm between rich and poor in a state that long has been a magnet for those in search of a better life.

The number of related children living in poverty shot up 41% in the 1980s in California--meaning that 1.3 million children now live in needy households. In Los Angeles County, some communities enjoyed vaulting gains in household income, with median levels surpassing $100,000 a year; residents of other communities, including those in riot-torn South Los Angeles, barely kept pace with inflation.

In April, the Federal Reserve reported that the richest 1% of Americans increased their portion of the nation’s private wealth from 31% in 1983 to 37% in 1989. Most of the U.S. population, meanwhile, experienced a slight drop in their share of the pie.

Economic inequality and neglect of the inner city, little discussed in recent years, were cited by many residents of South Los Angeles after the riot as sources of pent-up rage. Far-reaching economic shifts, such as the decline in the better-paying blue-collar jobs, have taken a particular toll on poorly educated minorities.

“I think a lot of the feeling of hostility and anger is a dawning sense of injustice,” said Robert Heilbroner, an economist at the New School for Social Research in New York City, in an interview last month.

The Rev. Murray maintained that although the Los Angeles riot had its beginnings with racial violence at Florence and Normandie avenues, it transformed into a “class struggle” as it spread through the city, with looters of all races joining in the mayhem.

However, the growing antipathy toward the political system is a broad-based phenomenon that includes a great many people who wouldn’t dream of throwing a brick or setting a fire. In fact, the biggest mystery about today’s alienation may be something that growing numbers of people are declining to do--exercise their right to vote.

Not Just Anger

Some analysts say it shows people aren’t so mad at all--otherwise they’d be venting their rage in the voting booth.

This much is agreed: Turnout in presidential elections has been shrinking for about 30 years, a trend that accelerated in 1972 when 18-year-olds were allowed to vote. In 1960, for instance, 62.8% of eligible Americans joined in the national contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. But by 1988, when Bush ran against Dukakis, only 50.15% bothered to participate.

Interviews with the public suggest a variety of reasons other than complacency for boycotting elections these days: that it makes no difference to select between candidates Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that a single vote doesn’t mean much, that the issues have become too complex, that politicians don’t care about average citizens.

In Upstate New York, Colgate University student Patrick Chen said that school exams and getting a job were more pressing concerns than the November election. Also, he feels uninformed about the issues, expressing the wish that they could be boiled down and summarized in a chart.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s something that sums up what’s going on,” said Chen, a 19-year-old psychology major from Washington, D.C. That would help me. “That would simplify things for me.”

But he said he still considers voting to be important: “I definitely think I should be voting. Like the old cliche--you can’t complain if you don’t vote.”

Today’s unhappiness is just the latest in a wave of discontent with government that has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. By one scenario, the current episode may have been touched off by the 1987 stock market crash, which symbolized the end of a heady boom and the slow slide toward recession.

Superficially, at least, today’s mistrust also has parallels to earlier eras of anti-government fervor. Both the Populist movement of the late 1800s and the Progressive movement of the early 1900s were fueled in part by anger at government corruption, said Robert Dallek, a historian at UCLA.

Early in the century, big-city political bosses were the targets of voters’ anger. Today, check-bouncers in Congress are expected to pay the price. Already, more than 50 House members have chosen to quit rather than face the voters’ judgment in November.

In another possible parallel, the earlier reform movements protested growing concentrations of wealth and power within an elite of railroad barons, financiers and industrialists, a distant echo of today’s concerns about the rising gap between rich and poor. Such issues helped propel the strongest third-party presidential bid of the century, when former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt sought a third term on the Progressive Bull Moose ticket in 1912--earning 27% of the vote.

A USC political scientist draws analogies between the public mood and both the economic distress of the 1930s and the anti-corruption sentiments of earlier reform movements: National leaders “haven’t really woken up and realized there are some very, very serious problems in the psyche of the American people,” said Sheldon Kamieniecki.

In the short run, the anti-political mood raises questions about the effects of a Perot candidacy. A recent Times Poll, for example, shows Perot statistically tied with George Bush for first place among California voters, with Democrat Bill Clinton third.

Even more broadly, some worry about the effect of widespread cynicism on American democracy itself.

Much of the public, it seems, is torn between a desire to receive the benefits of government--health care, education, Social Security, police and other services--and a resistance to paying for them with higher taxes. As low voter turnouts suggest, many Americans refrain from civic participation altogether and contribute little to public debate.

To leaders, it sometimes might seem like a confusing jumble of signals from a lazy electorate. “They’re apathetic, they’re uninformed and they’re ignorant,” declared Douglas A. Muzzio, a professor of political science at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

He describes today’s mood as “a minor nervous breakdown,” in which American society seems to have lost its moorings, a problem exacerbated by the end of the Cold War, which at least provided many with a clear delineation between the good guys and the bad guys.

Unaccountable Leaders

Others worry of the dangers that could arise from a public that opts out of the political system by ignoring elections. Further drops in voter participation would raise the specter of leaders who are not accountable to large portions of the public, worries Lee M. Miringoff, a pollster at Marist College. “That seems to be the direction we’re headed in right now.”

In a brown, adobe-style bed and breakfast hotel in Albuquerque, N.M., Nancy Hoffman shares much of the discontent of other voters these days. But, in a break from painting a guest room, she also reveals a sentiment less emphasized these cynical days: hope.

“I just can’t believe we’re being offered the people we’re being offered,” said the innkeeper, 61, who intends to vote in the fall but has little faith in Bush or Clinton. “I just don’t know what to say. Where is the leadership?”

But she believes the much-maligned system still can work, based on her experience as an employee in foundations that sought government support for victims of head injuries and other causes.

“You have to really understand the issues, really educate yourself, cover all fronts and knock on all doors to make things happen,” said Hoffman, who worked in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I think part of the reason for (today’s unhappiness) is that too many people haven’t gotten involved. . . . Very positive results can happen--when there’s a willingness to learn, and you persevere.”

Voting for President

The percentage of the voting-age population that votes in presidential elections has dropped steadily over the years. The sharp decline in 1972 reflects the impact of lowering the voting age to 18. ‘60: 62.8% ‘64: 61.9% ‘68: 60.9% ‘72: 55.2% ‘76: 53.2% ‘80: 52.6% ‘84: 53.1% ‘88: 50.15% Source: Committee to Study the American Electorate