In presidential politics, Democrats can learn plenty from Republicans, as the results of the last three White House elections demonstrate.
A single page from the Republican playbook might lift up Democrats in the campaign year now upon us. That`s the page that counsels political parties to avoid needless democracy.
Heresy? Not if you`re interested in winning a presidential election more than every generation or so.
The Democratic Party is trapped in an embarrassing and self-defeating swamp of intraparty spats, fringe issues, litmus tests, selfishness and an institutional inability to say no.
Last month in New Hampshire, to cite the most recent example, a pair of marginal presidential candidates stormed a health-care forum sponsored by the party, demanding and receiving places at the conference table.
Naturally, there wasn`t much health care discussed at the health-care forum. In fact, it degenerated into the sort of pointless, self-indulgent exercise voters have learned to associate with Democrats.
Five of the six major declared Democratic candidates were on hand, but the panel already had been sidetracked by the presence of former Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a tiresome relic who imagines his spittin` and whittlin` approach to national politics is still charming.
Former Irvine, Calif., Mayor Larry Agran and socialist Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance Party whined about their exclusion, and were joined in the misfit chorus by former California Gov. Jerry Brown, the career politician who is passing himself off as an outsider.
There they go again, as Ronald Reagan used to say.
Republicans would have run the whole renegade bunch out of the ballroom and taken their chances with the political consequences. It`s a risk Democrats ought to consider taking.
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Somewhere along the way, Democrats lost track of the concept of party discipline.
Everyone in the party seems to view himself as a freelancer as well as keeper of the Democratic faith, and the conduct of self-proclaimed party leaders last year in declining to challenge Bush is illustrative of the malaise.
Last spring, when Bush appeared headed for a landslide victory in 1992, the so-called top tier of Democratic names were eyeing the exit signs.
Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee said he was finishing a book. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri said he didn`t want to leave his congressional post, where he helps his party control one of the most-despised institutions in the country and where Democrats with a 100-vote majority can`t override presidential vetoes.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said the country was in dire straits, but he`d get back to us in 1996.
Regrets? They`ve had a few. But everybody had his reasons at the time, and most of them involved running against Vice President Dan Quayle in four years.
Hardly a word was spoken about the best interests of the Democratic Party.
Then there was Mario Cuomo. Maybe there still is Mario Cuomo.
In declining to make the race last month, the New York governor cited his state`s budgetary mess and alleged deadlines for White House candidates set down by Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown.
Cuomo kept talking about complying with these supposed deadlines, when the only deadline that mattered was the filing date for the New Hampshire primary-Dec. 20, the day the governor said no.
Nobody told Cuomo he couldn`t run for president.
In fact, his rivals in the Democratic Party had been calling on him to run, if only to help draw some attention to themselves. Quayle was baiting Cuomo from the wings, as were a gaggle of Republican consultants.
Meanwhile, Cuomo`s minions, particularly John Marino, chairman of the New York Democratic Party, were having it both ways for months, asking party regulars to wait out the Mario Scenario, all the while insisting the Cuomo rumors were generated by a rapacious press corps.
Yes, some Democrats did have the temerity to suggest to the enigmatic New Yorker that he get on with it. The message was uncomplicated: Buy the ticket and take the ride.
Some Democrats suggested that while Cuomo would be a formidable candidate, the nomination of a man who couldn`t think of a compelling reason to run for president might not be the best course of action for a party that has come up a loser in five of the last six presidential elections.
In the end, Cuomo did exactly what he wanted to do, and for his own reasons, with little or no regard for his party. His actions supply a working definition of a modern-day Democrat.