Divided We Stand

Just in time for the pundits to begin their quadrennial flirtation with the rosy idea that in this great country, anyone can be president -- even a Democrat. And Bush: He was the most popular president in history, except when his polls plummeted. American confidence was restored, only it was also in the worst shape anyone could remember. He ran a tight ship, orchestrating policy with a sure hand through a small circle of advisers; that is, when his administration wasn't in disarray, riven by squabbles among a bitterly divided staff.

It depended, month by month and episode by episode, on whether he was dealing with foreign policy or domestic matters. It was as if all of us -- president, people, providence -- conspired to arrange reality as a matter of opposites, as if we could not deal with any story more ambiguous or complex.

Abroad: transformation. At home: stasis.

The president volunteered a radical reduction in America's nuclear arsenal, seeing in the Soviet Union's collapse a chance to overturn the inexorable logic of the arms race. On a separate front, he and his silken sidekick Jim Baker nudged the Middle East toward peace. And the hostages came home, the wry serenity of Terry Anderson offering Americans one of the winter's rare flutters of joy. Even when acts overseas were ineffective or unpopular, Bush was credited with leadership by a country that likes action in its presidents.

But the man who had campaigned on a promise to run the economy just like Reagan -- only more so, or less so; only better -- had gotten to the bottom of Reagan's famous parable about the little boy on Christmas who dug and dug through the manure with all the optimism of his sunny nature. Bush's shovel had finally struck the boards of the stable floor and broken on the bitter truth that there was no pony.

"It will not be a deep recession," said the president in January. It will "soon give way to a new cycle of growth," he said in April. And in November, more plaintively: "There ought to be, in my view, given the economic place where we stand now, more confidence."

But no tide rose to lift all boats; the deficit did not narrow; the recession did not end. Or rather, it did end, the economists told us, but we were not believing them, and so we did not behave as if it had ended, and thus we postponed its end.

Every week, capital-W Washington assured us that things were getting better; every week, the people who simply live here suspected that they weren't. Even here, in a local economy more stable than most, desperate car dealers stood all day in lots full of cars and empty of customers. Area banks began to lead the nation in bad real estate debt. Madison National failed, as the National Bank of Washington had before it. Other local banks were, in the quaint language of regulators, "ailing."

For the working middle class, there was the slow leak of jobs and confidence. Across the area there were increasing claims on Medicaid, unemployment, welfare. And even residents of our richest suburbs -- even Fairfax, even Montgomery -- experienced the shock of being asked to tighten their belts.

As for the homeless . . . what homeless? If anything changed for them, it was a barely perceptible acceleration toward the communal will not to see them at all.

Do something, America told Bush. Prime the pump. Tax the rich. Cut the deficit. Give the middle class a break. Help the poor (if there's anything left over). While you're at it, give us national health insurance.

For, despite all our common sense, hadn't we also come to believe in Ronald Reagan's pony?

We'll have to give it up, of course. Like teenagers, we grope our way toward reality, toward reconciling the extremes of false cheer and solitary despair. Maybe the soothing '90s will help us, if they ever begin. Until then, those of us who live in and around Washington can take heart from at least one glorious distraction, a single shared incantation:

How about those Redskins! Marjorie Williams's last story for the Magazine was "No Sex, Please! We're In Washington.

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