POLITICS : As Parties Fragment, Can Gingrich Win It for Clinton?

That growing rumble from the tectonic plates of U.S. politics may keep building through next November’s election. If Washington’s budget confrontation lengthens, political parties and ideologies could tremble and shake more than expected. Third-party talk could grow obsolete. Instead, fifth and sixth parties may be on the horizon--from fiscal gloom-and-doomers to herbal brigades. And House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) may be the bogyman of 1996, just as President Bill Clinton was of 1994.

Not necessarily, of course. The budgetary steel fist Clinton is shaking today could be next week’s sweaty handshake on a budget compromise. And Bosnia could be a military and electoral disaster.

On the other hand, Clinton may have arrived at a new politics: a bold 11-month strategic confrontation that traps Senate GOP Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the President’s probable 1996 opponent, into relentless joint appearances with the hugely unpopular Gingrich on behalf of budget and national priorities that the public rejects 2-1.

The two-party system, meanwhile, is giving off major rumbling noises, especially in California--which has the nation’s most important electoral, as well as geological, tectonic plates. Budget failure, along with the larger problems of national two-party politics, is already influencing three potential new parties or independent presidential candidacies: Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which won ballot status in California several weeks ago; Ralph Nader’s signal last week that he’ll seek the Green Party presidential nomination in California’s March primary (which could position him to win 3%-5% statewide in November and so cost Clinton the Golden State), and the “Secret Seven,” organized by ex-Colorado Gov. Dick Lamm, along with Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) and ex-Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas--all of whom have been discussing a new centrist party committed to deficit reduction. Neither these individuals nor their cause exactly vibrates with charisma.

The country is not losing much if Congress and the President continue their standoff. On the contrary, this budget passed by Congress, is so lopsided--crunching Medicare, Medicaid and education, while giving away two-thirds as much in new tax breaks--that it’s unworkable. Even using its framework for compromise could be a great mistake. The 60% of Americans who support a veto have, in effect, given Washington a message: The people want to a major role in deciding what happens.

The pragmatic side of Clinton might prefer a compromise that lets tensions ease after he’s gotten the immediate political profit from upholding such popular causes as Medicare and education. However, with polls showing rank-and-file Democratic voters unified behind the President’s budget position by roughly 5-1, while GOP voters are badly split, the politics have become compelling. While Democratic voters have come together in rejecting the GOP budget, Clinton has re-embraced the traditional Democratic stance of supporting programs for the poor and middle-class and attacking Republicans for favoritism to business and the rich.

This approach was the same pro-little-guy politics that enabled Clinton to rally after early New England primary losses in 1992, and wallop his deficit-focused rival, Tsongas, in the South and Midwest.

Not surprisingly, as Clinton has moved back toward traditional Democratic economics, Tsongas, together with Bradley, Lamm and four others--former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, ex-Minnesota Rep. Tim Penny, ex-Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker and current Maine Gov. Angus King--are talking about a new party that would be fiscally conservative and culturally liberal, reformist and environmentalist. Their anti-deficit fervor borders on zealotry. Lamm, the group’s organizer, could be its political Achilles’ heel: In 1984, his concern about entitlements led him to suggest that, at a certain medical point, old people should just die and stop costing the nation so much.

Also, just as Perot moved quickly to preempt a potential new independent party when Colin L. Powell looked like a possible competitor, Nader let it be known he would run for the California Green Party presidential nomination soon after word leaked of the Tsongas-Bradley-Lamm maneuvers. While there’s no overt linkage, Nader on the 1996 California ballot, in addition to a Perot campaign, would probably discourage the deficit-busters from trying to put yet another independent on the Golden State ballot.

Besides the crowded ballot and the hint of literal granny-bashing, the fiscal-sacrifice septet also face some tough cultural and statistical cautions in trying to muscle Clinton toward their fiscal viewpoint. They’re mostly Ivy Leaguers--two Yalies, two Dartmouth men and one Princetonian--from the Colorado-Minnesota-New England axis. This is virtually the same Volvo-station-wagon geography that fiscal conservative and cultural liberal John Anderson tapped in his weak 1980 independent bid. (He got 7% of the vote.) Even more significant, Anderson drew about equally from Democrats and Republicans, thus having little partisan impact on the November outcome. Bradley or Weicker would probably repeat this--which shouldn’t scare Clinton.

However, if Clinton really isn’t vulnerable to this kind of independent threat, the politics represented by Perot, on one hand, and Nader or Jesse Jackson, on another, is more high stakes. To put things in Machiavellian terms, Clinton should want a national budget standoff that 1) helps draw Perot, the balanced-budget-amendment booster, into the race in protest against bipartisan failure, and 2) simultaneously convinces Nader and Jackson not to run because Clinton refused to compromise with fundamentally unacceptable GOP views.

Nader or Jackson both threaten Clinton--remember Jackson is also weighing a third-party bid--because each would take roughly 80% of his vote from Clinton and the Democrats. A 1996 Perot candidacy, however, should help Clinton. After the needed signatures were collected to get Perot’s party on the California ballot, statistics from the two largest counties, Los Angeles and San Diego, showed most new registrants were ex-Republicans.

But the prime opening Clinton that could get from vetoing the GOP’s budget is the political chance to spend the 1996 campaign discussing what’s in it: pain for the middle and working classes and profits for corporations and the well-to-do. Then he can argue that the GOP behind this plan should be defeated in November--to let a new, fairer approach begin in 1997. President Harry S. Truman did something like this in 1948, when he vetoed the Republican Congress’ upper-bracket-tilted tax cuts and then successfully made the actions of that GOP Congress the centerpiece of the elections.

Clinton, moreover, has a great asset in Gingrich, the abrasive history-professor-turned congressman. Hardly anyone knew the name of the GOP Speaker in the 80th Congress, but Gingrich, with his 2-1 unpopularity ratings, has come to personify the in-your-face excesses of the GOP Congress. In the Nov. 7 off-year elections, several Democrats used Gingrich as the issue--and won. This confirmed recent opinion polls--and it’s not unrealistic for Democrats to start dreaming of recapturing Congress, as they did in 1948.

As for Clinton and the Democrats, such an election would also offer the opportunity to trap the likely GOP presidential nominee--because Dole, as Senate majority leader, has to stand before the cameras twice a week with Gingrich. He shares the podium, helping the Speaker turn the pages of his budget charts and venturing only a thin, half-hidden smile as the bombastic Georgian again blames liberals for the latest tabloid-feeding murder. There may be worse 1996 campaign images, but not many.

Worried Republicans are already discussing hide-the-Speaker tactics, but Democrats, independents and new parties have something else in mind: a glaring 11-month spotlight.*