Saving the World Without Easy Answers

The thing that seems to bother Sen. Paul E. Tsongas (D-Mass.) the most is dogmatic ideology. Tsongas always frowns at an easy answer, no matter which end of the political spectrum it comes from. He picks apart partisan politics with the passion of an inspired poly-sci professor, noting casually that "a lot of this will be cleared up in my upcoming book." But Tsongas has already sounded his bugle for the charge of "humanistic realism," a leaner, meaner brand of liberalism he thinks will work in the 1980s. With his wordy solutions and academic jargon, Tsongas has, whether he likes it or not, formed a new political ideology, which he predicts will galvanize the country's moderates and liberals by 1984.

Tsongas is well known in the elegant halls of the Russell Senate Office Building for his intellectual snobbery. But he is one of the few senators who greets people in the elevator with a soft, "Hi; how are ya?" He receives visitors personally in his cramped suite on the third floor, and answers questions in an aide's tiny cubicle, while his staff lounges on the floor of his office discussing strategy. "Things are tight, even in our party," he says with a straight face.

Famous for his impatience with the old guard of liberal Democrats, Tsongas still reserves his most biting criticism for the GOP and its leader, President Reagan. Describing a conversation with some Capitol Hill cronies the morning after Reagan's recent economic address, Tsongas recalls a suggestion he made: "We ought to give him (Reagan) everything he wants, and if we do that, there won't be a Republican elected in the next 20 years."

Dismissing the president's decontrol and deregulation plans as misleading, Tsongas zeroes in on his favorite topic--the Kemp-Roth tax cut proposals. Tsongas has only scorn for the 30-per-cent three-year reduction plan; he calls it "very inflationary and economically unjust." He adds that in Washington "everyone knows that Kemp-Roth is a dog, and they're going to kill it in the Congress." What really makes the 39-year-old first-term senator angry is that in the short run, Reagan "can say he was for it without suffering any of the political ramifications of the damned thing passing."

Tsongas likes to quote ex-Reagan opponent and current Vice President George Bush on the wisdom of across-the-board tax slashing--"It's voodoo economics." He adds that the witch doctor-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will eventually be haunted by his do-all potions. Tsongas predicts that the Republicans will not realize that they have overshot the public's call for economic responsibility until it is too late, and "we have decontrol and deregulation and all these cuts, and the average American gets his heating bill, and it's gone up double, and then he remembers that the president said inflation is all the cost of government, and then he can understand that he's been fooled."

Enter the rejuvenated Democratic party, under the leadership of Paul Tsongas and Co. To take advantage of the GOP's blunders, Tsongas insists his colleagues must present "a basket of ideas that will compel people to vote Democratic. You cannot, in essence, say, 'Look we did all these things back in the 1960s and 1930s,' or 'We're nicer people.' That overbrimming basket does not exist yet, Tsongas says, but by 1984 he believes the likes of Massachusetts elder statesman Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 will move away from the failed "New Deal approach" and join the ranks of the revised left. "I'm shifting, why shouldn't he?" Tsongas asks, shrugging off Kennedy's promises to defend traditional liberalism.

Tsongas outlined many of his new ideas in his controversial 256-step Massachusetts Plan, and he is still hearing angry reverberations from the left after a scolding speech last year at the national convention of the Americans for Democratic Action. Over the past eight months he has called for, among other things, increased tax credits for big industry (to encourage more efficient energy use), and higher gasoline taxes to cut consumption. In the area of international affairs, he has supported a tougher American stance in response to Soviet aggression.

The Lowell native, who unseated Republican incumbent Edward Brooke in 1978, has provoked considerable criticism in New England with his backing of limited nuclear power usage. Conservationists have yelped that Tsongas, a progressive leader in many Senate environmental battles, including the fight to approve the Alaska Land Conservation legislation, has sold out on nuclear power.

Not so, retorts Tsongas--angry that he has been cast by some as a hypocrite. He says he responds to the anti-nukers in the same way that he does to Reagan administration members who oppose development of solar power. Repeating his call for "a basket of alternatives," he says, "In both cases what you have is a response that is ideological but does not happen to square with realities that are out there."

Tsongas also responds defensively when challenged on his commitment and the commitment of his Congressional allies to make the cuts in federal spending needed to improve the nation's economy. He admits that all legislators have a privilege to sponsor pet projects, only some deserve more of a privilege than others.

"The only reason I'm sitting here is because I could afford to go to good schools (Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard), and the only reason I could do that was because I was able to get loans," Tsongas explains. "Providly student loans...lets your best people rise through the system...you can call that a pet project. What about tobacco subsidies? What's more important? Clearly you have to make those judgements."

The subject of education sparks another resentful attack on the Republicans, whom Tsongas says must now follow through on their bold campaign promises to abolish cabinet-level departments and countless smaller agencies or face derision from the cynical electorate. Either way, he contends the GOP will lose. "It's one thing to be out in the bushes taking pot shots, and another to be in government with your hand on the till, ah...tiller," Tsongas says with an abrupt snicker.

"You have a situation where they have said, 'We're going to lift the grain embargo against the Soviets, the Panama Canal treaty was awful, the SALT treaty should be rejected, no aid for New York City, no aid for Chrysler, that kind of thing. You follow through on that attitude, you've got chaos," he adds.

One of the forces of Tsongas sees as pushing the Republicans toward their downfall is the pesky conservative fringe--the odd collection of special interest groups led by outfits such as the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). In Tsongas' view, the 1980 election was "a great shudder" that brought the country back toward equilibrium after it had swung out to the left. "NCPAC and the far right senators in the Senate will de-stabilize the country in the other way, and the more the country bends to their position, the more violent will be the swing back," he says.

If Reagan and his followers let the radical right ride piggy-back through the legislative battles of the next four years, Tsongas says the Republicans will be forced to expend political capital on social issues such as abortion and prayer in public schools, instead of on the economy.

Never one to root for confusion merely for the sake of party success, Tsongas offers his advice freely to a president whom he sees in a hopeless situation. "The great issues for the future are energy, the economy, defense, environment, the third world, and international trade. Inflation is a function of these things. The basic question he should ask himself is. 'Does it work?' not 'Does it adhere to my right wing philosophy?" When you come out with Kemp-Roth, you are not answering that question."

For further information on the means to salvage the economy, the political balance, and the nation in general, Tsongas recommends his own book, expected out this fall. Unlike the Massachusetts Plan, which is dominated by outlandish strategies for better energy use in the Northeast, the Tsongas tome will be a more comprehensive work "to get people to think through, what is a political philosophy?"

The usually serious legislator cracks a thin smile, acknowledging, perhaps, his own inability to avoid a set of beliefs that someone else might call an ideology. "What I am doing is taking the problems you are faced with and trying to resolve them within some kind of framework."