Voters Soured on the System May Spoil Clinton’s Plans : Politics: His activist agenda depends on overcoming a distrust of government that runs through electorate.

For the people in this middle-class town in central New Jersey, the debate over economic policy in Washington exists as in a fog.

Yet in a day of conversations at Little League fields, the public library, a church bazaar and a summer night’s carnival, certain beliefs emerge with crystalline clarity:

--Government will waste their money.

--No matter what Washington promises, the deficit will not be reduced.

--Nothing the government does will ever help them directly.

--Special interests will carve out privileged deals.

--New taxes will fall mainly on their shoulders, however often the President insists otherwise.

“In the final analysis,” said sales manager Dan Lombardi, a typical voice, “I am going to be paying for a lot of programs that are just crap.”

These ideas have so permeated U.S. society that they can be said to constitute the bedrock of national politics in the 1990s. They are also the major impediment to President Clinton’s hope of building a new majority coalition for the Democratic Party.

After 12 years during which two Republican presidents sought mainly to restrain government, Clinton proposes to “reinvent” and reinvigorate it. His economic plan aims not only to reduce the federal budget deficit through taxes and spending cuts, but simultaneously to fund an array of new economic and social programs.

Clinton has proposed to increase spending by $144 billion over the next five years, funding “investments” ranging from Head Start to a national service plan for young people to inner-city development to high-technology projects, such as an information superhighway.

And he is planning a massive overhaul of the health care system that would greatly increase the role of the public sector.

But as he presses his agenda with Congress and the nation, Clinton must struggle against widespread resistance to new taxes and skepticism about the worth of new spending--especially among the white, middle-class voters he needs to expand the 43% plurality he won last fall into a majority by 1996.

So sensitive are many voters to any proposal for increased spending or taxes that the GOP has found it like pushing a rock down a hill to portray Clinton’s agenda as a return to traditional tax-and-spend Democratic economics.

And yet polls also show that Americans are uneasy about the nation’s future and anxious for leadership from Washington to revitalize the economy.

And therein lies Clinton’s preeminent political challenge: to convince Americans soured on Washington that government can be part of the solution--not the problem, as Ronald Reagan memorably labeled it in his first Inaugural Address.

“Because we believe in activist government, part of our goal is to build broad public support within the middle class for progressive ideas again,” said Al From, president of the Democratic Leadership Council and a Clinton adviser.

In making that case, Clinton is running uphill against a full generation of declining faith in Washington’s efficiency, effectiveness and ethics.

When Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society in 1964, 62% of those polled in the University of Michigan’s annual election survey said government in Washington could be trusted to do what’s right most of the time; in 1992, just 26% agreed.

In a Los Angeles Times Poll completed in June, faith in government’s capacity to do the right thing dropped to just 13%.

Even those numbers may understate the political problem facing the President. No divide among the three politically active blocs in the electorate--Clinton supporters, Republicans and Ross Perot supporters--may be wider, or more difficult to bridge, than their divergent views about the role and efficacy of government.

Those who already define themselves as Clinton supporters broadly say they support more government intervention in the economy and increased spending on social needs--a point underscored by the calls for new domestic spending from a meeting of U.S. mayors in New York last week.

In the recent Times Poll, majorities of Clinton supporters said they agreed with the ideas that government should establish closer partnerships with business and should “help people when they are in trouble.” That attitude is especially pronounced among blacks and liberals--the foundation of Clinton’s coalition.

Those who identify themselves as Republicans said they remain philosophically opposed to new government initiatives and overwhelmingly reject both of those ideas.

With those who call themselves Perot supporters, the problem is more complex. In theory, many can see an expanded role for government: More than 40% say they support closer partnerships with business, a large majority said it believes that government should help people in need and a majority said it supports Clinton’s plans to expand spending on items such as food stamps and tax credits for the working poor.

At the same time, however, they said they are extremely dubious that government can effectively meet such goals: They were more likely than any other Americans to say government wastes over half of every dollar it spends, and the least likely to say the government in Washington can be trusted to do what is right.

These clashing priorities clanged through conversations earlier this month in Edison, a racially-mixed city of almost 90,000 people.

In last November’s election, Clinton narrowly carried this community, where families crowd the parking lot at the Little League fields with Ford Aerostars, Dodge Caravans, Plymouths, Pontiacs and the occasional Mercedes-Benz. Now attitudes toward the President range from anger to disappointment.

It is possible to find sympathy for Clinton in Edison--a sense that he has not been given enough opportunity to grow into the job. But it is more difficult to find sympathy for his economic vision.

While many say they share Clinton’s critique of Republican economic management and agree that the country has failed to address important problems over the past decade, most say the country can’t afford new programs until after it reduces the federal deficit.

Particularly with white voters--but even with some blacks--the idea that the government could do anything well, or anything to help them, runs into a web of suspicion and cynicism so dense and self-reinforcing that it is virtually impenetrable.

Much of the complaint about government in Edison is reflexive, timeless, impervious to argument. It is a matter of faith that government puts its money in the wrong places. Sometimes the target is foreign aid; sometimes it is the politicians themselves: “They are taxing us to death,” said Michael Raniere, a retired government employee, “yet they are taking the money and putting it in their pocket.”

More rarely than might have been the case a few years ago, the target is minorities and the poor.

But even those who make narrower distinctions say they still believe that Clinton has asked them for sacrifice without demanding it first in Washington. Jim Mackevich is a local attorney sympathetic to Clinton and supportive of Democratic Gov. James J. Florio--whose popularity plummeted after raising taxes early in his term.

Mackevich said he agrees with Clinton that taxes will have to be raised to reduce the federal deficit, which he blames on Reagan and George Bush. But like so many here, Mackevich said he sees government as a sinkhole of waste that hasn’t had to face the streamlining now wrenching corporations like IBM and General Motors.

“The Department of Agriculture has 150,000 people in it, and there are only 200,000 farmers,” he said. “If AT&T; can lop off 200,000 jobs, why can’t the government?”

Mackevich’s numbers are not quite correct. The Agriculture Department currently has roughly 112,000 employees, including many who handle consumer-protection operations such as meat and poultry inspections. The nation has roughly 1.2 million farm operators and another 2.2 million agriculture-related workers.

But in political terms, what counts is not so much accuracy as attitude, and his perception of waste is tremendously widespread.

By seeking to expand new programs while raising new taxes--even in the name of deficit reduction--Clinton, for many here, has surrendered his identity as a defender of the middle class.

Dissent from the indictment of government comes primarily from those who say they identify with the Democratic Party.

Robin Melvin, a young black woman who voted for Clinton last year, says government must work harder to root out crime and drugs in the cities.

Nancy Rivera, like other minority residents in Edison, doesn’t seem as angry about taxes as her Anglo neighbors: “If we have to pay more taxes to live better in the long run,” she said, “it’s something we have to do.”

Like several others here, Lennie Ladislaw, a small-business owner and Clinton voter, says he is eagerly awaiting Clinton’s plan to reform the health care system.

But the skepticism about government’s efficiency and judgment infects even conversations about health care--the area where people in Edison saw the biggest need for some form of federal action.

Amid the desire for reform and unhappiness with doctors and pharmaceutical companies, there is also measurable fear that greater government involvement will diminish the care for those already insured, or require crippling new taxes to cover an expansion of care to the uninsured.

Looking back, many Clinton advisers say they now agree that they underestimated how hard the Administration would have to work to overcome hostility toward Washington.

“They didn’t understand how serious the lack of faith in the federal government was and the amount of work they had to do to reconstitute the center . . . before they could go and propose all these new little programs,” said one political adviser to the White House.

Ironically, one asset on which Clinton may be able to rebuild that center is the cynicism about all large institutions that has contributed to the erosion of confidence in government.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff says that most Americans--while dubious of government’s capacity--are looking for someone to “police the system,” to defend ordinary working families against big business and other impersonal forces, such as the medical industry and the turbulence in the international economy.

If Clinton is to create a new consensus for his activist agenda, he will have to convert people like Victor Mazzei of Edison, a father of four working on his second marriage, who runs a small auto-repair business, works a second job at night and sports a large tattoo on his right arm.

Mazzei voted for Perot last fall, and he said he feels ripped off by Washington: “Nobody minds paying if you get something for it,” he said. “But we’re not getting anything.”

But he said he is even angrier at big business, and willing to imagine an extension of federal control over the economy far greater than anything Clinton has ever proposed.

“Big business has control of this country right now, and they keep the middle class down,” he said as he watched his son patrol a Little League outfield. The government, he said, “should just freeze” prices the way President Richard Nixon did in 1971.

Listening carefully to Mazzei and others in Edison, the anger at government and taxes reveals itself as a metaphor for disappointment with the entire direction of American life--particularly the stagnation in the growth of living standards that has squeezed the middle class for the past 20 years.

When those around Clinton ask whether he can build a new majority for an activist government agenda, they know the real question is whether he can demonstrate tangible progress against those broader trends.

“Passage of programs by themselves does not guarantee success,” said Stanley B. Greenberg, Clinton’s pollster. “There has to be restructuring of the American economy . . . there has to be health care that is secure . . . there has to be a government that is leaner and more efficient.

“He has got to show government can be successful. That’s the way out of this mess--the way we can create a new coalition.”

A Lack of Trust

Many Americans do not trust the government in Washington to do what is right. Clinton supporters think government should get involved in creating jobs, while the Republican coalition feels the government should have no involvement. Perot supporters’ views on the subject are mixed.

How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?

Total Clinton Republican Perot Support sample supporters supporters supporters none Always 2% 3% 1% 1% 1% Most of the time 12% 19% 7% 4% 10% Some of the time 54% 56% 58% 55% 46% Hardly ever 31% 20% 34% 40% 41%

*

Do you think government should get involved in trying to help business create jobs and compete productively, or is that something business can do better without government involvement?

Total Clinton Republican Perot Support sample supporters supporters supporters none Government should 45% 59% 15% 42% 47% get involved Government should 49% 34% 79% 52% 47% have no involvement

How the poll was conducted: The Times Poll interviewed 1,474 adults nationwide, by telephone, June 12 through June 14. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in the country. Random-digit dialing techniques were used to ensure that both listed and non-listed numbers had an opportunity to be contacted. Results were weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education and household size. The margin of sampling error for the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin is somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented.

Note: Numbers do no add up to 100% because “don’t know” categories are not shown.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times Poll

Search for Majority

Second in a series on the three-way competition among President Clinton, the Republican Party and Ross Perot to build a majority coalition in American politics

* PART ONE: An examination of the differing priorities and attitudes of the three major blocs in the electorate

* PART TWO: A look at the key issue dividing Americans: What is government’s role in society and the economy?

* PART THREE: How President Clinton’s efforts to build a legislative majority on Capitol Hill have exacerbated--and been complicated by--his lack of majority support in the nation.