COLUMN RIGHT/ TOM BETHELL : Silver Lining to a Clinton Presidency : He would be in line of fire early, setting up opportunity for conservatives in 1996.

For conservatives, this election may be the most dispiriting in memory. It’s hard to envisage any outcome of the presidential race that would stir much enthusiasm on the right. A come-from-behind victory for President Bush? A conservative speech writer mentioned to me that the prospect gives momentary pleasure, but upon reflection the heart sinks. As John Podhoretz points out in the current National Review, a reelected Bush would almost certainly “grow,” the code-word for a move to the left.

In any event, a Bush victory now seems unlikely. In the all-important economic area, the President has not convinced voters that he has learned from his mistakes. When Bill Clinton attacked “trickle-down economics” in the third presidential debate, Bush mystifyingly replied that he “didn’t want any more trickle-down government.” What was that supposed to mean? Bush has tried to associate his record with Ronald Reagan’s (15 million jobs created in the “Reagan-Bush years”). But Clinton understandably points out that Bush himself, in 1980, attacked the theoretical basis of the Reagan recovery as “voodoo economics.” Clinton also charges that Bush has actually tried to spend more money than Congress wanted: “It’s hard to outspend Congress, but he tried.” The economy will decide the election, and Bush has not given us reason to think that he will do better than Clinton.

The best that can be said for Ross Perot is that he may weaken the future President by confining his vote to less than 50%. Otherwise there’s little to recommend the man, who comes across as a silly, strutting demagogue. He’s on the verge of giving a bad name to billionaires. With his unsupported and (I believe) mendacious charges, his antagonism toward Bush has become so conspicuous that it might end up helping him.

The prospect of a Clinton presidency is of course not at all appealing to conservatives, but in his case second thoughts do at least lighten the gloom and disclose a silver lining. How much damage could a President Clinton actually do? By contrast with the 1970s, when the last Democratic candidate was elected, foreign affairs are much diminished in importance. Ceding territory to the communists is no longer an option. If an Andropov or a Brezhnev were still in the Kremlin, Clinton would stand little chance of victory. Bush never did grasp the extent to which the end of the Cold War would bail out the Democrats.

Domestically, Clinton would be tightly constrained by markets. Government debt as a percentage of GNP is already twice what it was when Jimmy Carter became President. Global markets will be poised to respond negatively if Clinton shows signs of trying to expand the already excessive reach and power of the state.

Clinton, moreover, does not to appear to share in the moral ambition (on behalf of others) that characterizes the left as a whole. (But one wishes someone had asked him to explain his comment in the third debate that “middle-class people” will “have their fair share of changing to do,” including “the challenge of becoming constantly re-educated.”) Clinton speaks solicitously of the middle class, perhaps because he knows that he cannot be elected without them. Perhaps he also knows that he cannot govern without them. He has come close to giving a no-new-taxes pledge for the middle class. All to the good.

If the polls are right, the Democrats are about to monopolize power in Washington. But they are also about to discover that, when they had a compliant Republican in the White House, they never had it so good. Moderate Republicans like Bush enact their opponents’ agenda, and so are obliged to take the blame when things go wrong. Democrats have not noticed how convenient this arrangement has been--policy influence without personal responsibility--because their own people have been excluded from power.

But with a Clinton presidency, we will see a great and welcome clarification. No longer will the clamorous victim groups who have made much of public life so unbearable in recent years be able to howl their customary accusations at Republicans in the White House. Oh, they will try. The policies of the Reagan-Bush years will become the legacy of the Reagan-Bush years. But soon enough Bill Clinton will be in the direct line of fire. A President Clinton will have to ride the bucking bronco of interest groups, and there’s always the possibility that he will fall off.

At that point, moderate Republicanism should also be in terminal disrepute. By 1996, there’s a good possibility that conservatives will have recaptured control of the GOP.