If you want to see the Democratic Party lumbering toward what it perceives as the political center, look no further than the House of Representatives.
In fact, inside the House, you can almost hear the party of George McGovern and Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis clank as it rumbles in the direction of moderation, away from what critics call ”Democratic dogma.”
Last week, House Democrats chose a couple of their thoroughly modern brethren as majority leader and majority whip.
Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Rep. William Gray of Pennsylvania are as up-to-date as Cajun cooking. Liberals with limits, populists with political-action committees, progressives who know their place, Gephardt and Gray make their colleagues comfortable.
The same standard applies to Speaker Tom Foley of Washington. And there is more to the Foley-Gephardt-Gray troika than the need for squeaky-clean replacements for ex-Speaker Jim Wright and former whip Tony Coelho, both of whom announced their retirements in the face of ethics scandals.
In the larger scheme, politicians such as these three are just what the political consultants ordered for a party that has lost five of the last six presidential elections.
Gephardt, for example, was among the founders of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of self-proclaimed moderate Democrats, men like Senators Sam Nunn of Georgia, Chuck Robb of Virginia and John Breaux of Louisiana.
The leadership council claims to be interested in the electoral pursuit of so-called ”Reagan Democrats,” and in steering the party away from its historic big-tax, big-spend image. Mostly, however, the lads on the council sit around and wonder what in the name of Tom Eagleton they`re going to do with Jesse Jackson.
Gray, a smart, articulate and savvy black preacher from Philadelphia, gets to play a role in putting Jackson to sleep, politically. The man from the Bright Hope Baptist Church offers a bright hope indeed to those Democrats looking for the center of the political universe.
Gray has built coalitions in his 10 years in the House. That was evident last week, when a majority of House Democrats chose him over two rivals on the first ballot, despite lingering rumors of a Justice Department investigation of personnel practices in his congressional office.
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What sorts of coalitions? During the balloting for whip, one aide to Gray marveled at the job being done in his man`s favor by Rep. Marty Russo of Illinois.
The congressman from the 3d District, from Midway Airport and Morgan Park, the longtime ally of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, was counting noses and grabbing elbows for Gray. Russo`s close friend and mentor Rostenkowski, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was backing another candidate.
All things in moderation seems to be the motto of the Democratic Party as the 1980s wind down. In the world of Gephardt and Gray and Nunn, moderation is the new dogma.
Nowadays, if a Democrat like the late Sen. Claude Pepper of Florida argued that the minimum wage ought to be more than 25 cents an hour, as Pepper did in 1938, his colleagues would establish a bipartisan task force and order it to come back with a report the summer after next.
Being whipped at the presidential ballot box over the last 25 years has transformed the Democrats into the party of decaffeinated coffee and blush Zinfandel, of artificial sweeteners and deep-breathing exercises.
Gephardt has much to recommend him, but his short-lived presidential campaign in 1987-88 exposed the quixotic nature of the modern political game. He journeyed to Iowa as an outsider, a telegenic fighter against the vested interests, a man telling voters, ”It`s your turn now.”
Unfortunately, some folks noticed that Gephardt took his neopopulist message to Iowa in an airplane loaded with dozens of his fellow House members, a chartered airplane paid for by lobbyists.
For the moment, the Democrats are basking in the afterglow of the recent House leadership elections. Wright and his steely-eyed partisan style is gone. Beyond that, the generational change is evident in both the House and Senate. Foley is 60, but a man of the House and without further ambition. Gephardt is 48, Gray is 47, and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine, who assumed the post at the start of this Congress, is 55.
We have seen the future, and it`s moderate. And it looks good on television.