‘92 NATIONAL ELECTIONS : NEWS ANALYSIS : Parties’ Dilemma: Government Role : Policy: Democrats have a great opportunity to show that the leadership can still solve problems. But there are formidable obstacles.

The outcome of the presidential election, particularly the sizable protest vote for Ross Perot, makes clear that both parties must deal with the major dilemma on the political landscape: the argument over the role of government.

The Republicans won one round of that dispute in 1980 when Ronald Reagan proclaimed government to be not the solution--but the problem. But that conviction, which flourished during the thriving 1980s, could not survive hard times during the George Bush presidency.

The returns from Tuesday’s balloting give the Democrats their best opportunity in more than a decade to show that government can still solve problems. But they face formidable obstacles, including widespread skepticism among the electorate, as demonstrated by the support of nearly one in five voters for Perot’s attacks on both parties and on the political Establishment.

“We’re moving into a very new era in our politics,” University of Texas political scientist Walter Dean Burnham said. He cited Perot’s strong showing and the increasing use by candidates of such unconventional forums as television and radio talk shows to communicate with voters.

If the two major parties “can define a role for themselves in coping with the governing process, they can survive,” Burnham said. Otherwise, he said, they might not.

As voters demonstrated in their rejection of Bush after four fitful years, Americans prefer an administration that can deliver prosperity, no matter what the ideological imprint.

That sobering axiom is clear to Democratic professionals who remember that the failures of the Jimmy Carter presidency sentenced them to more than a decade in the political wilderness.

“The future of the party will in large measure be shaped by the Clinton presidency and how he governs,” said Democratic consultant Mark Siegel, a former Carter White House aide. “We’ll be beyond rhetoric. He and the party will be accountable for his performance.”

Clinton has sought to depict himself as a “different kind of Democrat.” He wants government to be a catalyst for achieving desired results, a departure from the traditional Democratic approach of direct intervention, which often spawned costly new bureaucracies.

On health care, for example, which Clinton has said is a top priority for his first 100 days, “he’s not talking about taking over the health care system,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. Instead, he favors government involvement to manage competition among private insurers.

“It means governing on a different basis,” said Al From, head of the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist group that helped create the moderate philosophy Clinton espouses.

“It means laying out his own priorities and then getting the party to rally behind his own objectives rather than going to each group and suggesting: ‘We’ll give you what you want.’ ”

But, while this sounds fine in theory, no one is yet sure exactly how it will work in practice.

Democrats already are striving to redefine the party and the descriptions vary by individual preferences.

“The old image of the Democratic Party in this nation, I hope, is gone,” Texas Gov. Ann Richards claimed on the night of Clinton’s victory. “The new image is of people who are fiscally responsible, but really do care about people who are in need, people who are out of jobs.”

Clinton had considerable success conveying that perception of the party during the campaign, which, as surveys showed, helped him win the votes of many Reagan Democrats and independents.

But to make that more moderate approach to government work once he is in office, “he’s going to have to do a lot of things that sooner or later are going to make a lot of core Democratic groups very unhappy,” said Burnham. He asserted that Clinton risks alienating such traditional constituencies as blacks, senior citizens and low-income groups, if he cuts entitlements or offers tax incentives to spur investments or if he takes similar steps to cut the deficit and stimulate the economy.

For their part, many Republicans concede that their party has to find a way to make their conservative creed more relevant to problems that directly touch the lives of Americans, such as employment, health care and education.

“If I see anything in my interviews with focus groups it’s that people’s perceptions of what the role of government should be has shifted,” said William McInturff, GOP consultant who did polling for Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988 and for victorious Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in 1992.

Mindful that pressing issues like health care and the environment are too massive to be solved by local government or the private sector alone, McInturff said that voters want the federal government to step in and mandate solutions that the private sector will be obliged to follow.

“So a message on our part that essentially says, ‘Trust us, we’re going to get government out of your lives,’ when people are worried about solving these problems is essentially a disconnect,” McInturff declared.

The notion of finding a way to use government for something besides a scapegoat has support among conservative leaders like Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, mentioned as a prospect for chairman of the Republican National Committee when Bush leaves the White House.

“When Reagan was elected, government was the problem,” said Weber. “But as Reaganism progressed there was an aggressive attempt (by conservatives) to develop an agenda to address issues such as urban problems, housing and education--using government in a very different way than liberalism does.”

Weber cited proposals like tax breaks for urban enterprise zones and government-paid vouchers to help parents send their youngsters to private schools, which Bush supported but which conservatives complain he was not forceful enough in advocating.

“What we’ve been doing in the Reagan movement,” Weber said, “is inventing a concept of activist government consistent with conservative principles.”

Some critics think that, if the GOP is to win converts to its approach, it needs to play down the emphasis on moral values, which infused its convention and inspires the Christian activists who are becoming an increasingly influential force in the party.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.