<p> For the past year or so, a group of conservative and
liberal activists have been meeting quietly for dinner in
Washington. Given the guest list, one might expect this parley
to produce the sort of verbal food fight that typifies American
political debate and alienates so many voters. But the New
Paradigm Society, as the participants call their group, isn't
looking for arguments; it is searching for bipartisan solutions
to America's problems. The fact that they meet at all suggests
a sort of harmonic convergence between those who believe that
the ideas that powered both the political left and right in
America have ceased to be useful.
</p>
<p> One of the group's occasional guests is E.J. Dionne, a
Washington Post reporter whose new book, Why Americans Hate
Politics, is something of a New Paradigm manifesto. Dionne's
contention is that the central tenets of both political parties
have ossified. Rather than providing genuine solutions to rising
crime, declining educational standards and deteriorating race
relations, conservatives and liberals offer "false choices" that
divide voters in order to maintain power.
</p>
<p> The author directs most of his fire on the Democrats, who
he claims are unwilling to promote the kind of "public values"--self-reliance, responsibility, family stability and hard work--that most Americans still hold dear. Fragmented by an
intraparty civil war that began in the 1960s, Democrats
misconstrued voter complaints about crime as racism and mistook
the tax revolt of the 1970s for selfishness. Eventually, George
Bush crucified Michael Dukakis when the Democratic nominee
refused to comprehend why support for the Pledge of Allegiance
mattered deeply to voters.
</p>
<p> Conservatives, meanwhile, dutifully paid homage to these
values and scooped up disaffected Democrats. But conservatives
failed Americans by trying to placate both supply-siders and
traditional Republicans with an economic model that included
massive tax cuts and higher defense spending. The Republican
legacy is a $3 trillion debt, held in large part by foreign
investors, and a populace that feels cheated by a government
that doesn't seem to work. By 1990, when Bush agreed to raise
taxes in exchange for budget cuts from the Democrats, the G.O.P.
had run out of promises to make to voters.
</p>
<p> The next step, the author argues, is a compromise between
the two parties in which the aims of liberals and conservatives
can be accommodated. Dionne supplies some evidence for this:
last year Congress passed a child-care bill that com bined the
best principles of both con servatives and liberals. By tying
child-care benefits to the earned-income tax credit,
conservatives won incentives for those who would work their way
out of poverty. At the same time, liberals were able to broaden
government support for working mothers. There are other signs
that America is ready for bipartisanship: no line in George
Bush's Inaugural speech received more applause than his
admonishment to Congress, "They didn't send us here to bicker."
</p>
<p> But are there many opportunities for common ground?
Probably not. One of the problems with the new paradigm is that
it presumes Americans all want the same things. In a general
sense this is true: all people, for example, want a decent wage,
a comfortable and safe place to live and better opportunities
for their children. But the differences about the means of
achieving this dream are so fundamental that the means, in
essence, become the ends.
</p>
<p> Take crime. Conservatives believe criminals should be
punished, and thus the solution is more jails. Liberals believe
criminals are victims too, and thus the answer is more
antipoverty programs. What could be more fundamental? The
differences are, if anything, deeper in matters of race
relations. Everyone in America believes in equality. To many
whites it means color-blind laws. But to blacks equality means
affirmative action.
</p>
<p> As communism wanes, Dionne sees the 1990s as a rare
opportunity to merge the politics of left and right into a new
"politics of the center." In some issues there may be room for
compromise. But it seems unlikely that at a time when both
parties are struggling to define themselves anew, either will
