COLUMN: The race is on in Iowa

From Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96 From Lisa Levenson's, "First Person," Fall '96Every time I pick up the newspaper these days, it seems like another senator or representative has announced that he or she will not be seeking another term in office. The sheer number of early retirements and abrupt, mid-life career changes is becoming the stuff of record, with 13 senators and 38 representatives so far deciding to take the next bus, train or plane out of the nation's capital. Not surprisingly, the pundits are sorely mistaken in their choice of targets for investigation; these departures are not as surprising as they would have us believe. Most of the politicians now calling it quits entered their profession with high hopes, idealistic goals, boundless energy and the ambition to change the world. A couple of months inside the Beltway in the current political climate can quickly turn these beneficial qualities into caustic, destructive cynicism. Pushing legislation through Congress to improve people's lives is no doubt rewarding. However, hitting partisan roadblocks on every corner of C Street from the Rayburn House Office Building to the House chamber has to get frustrating pretty quickly -- especially for politicians accustomed to being in the majority for decades. They are now facing the fact that even sharing the president's priorities no longer guarantees budgetary success or the survival of key social programs. Disillusioned Democrats aren't the only ones bailing out of Washington in droves, though. Senior Republicans are leaving, too, telling their constituents that their work has lost its purpose, and that their consensus-building expertise could be better used elsewhere. They'd rather write books, serve as lobbyists or consultants or be commentators on the evening news. They believe they will touch more lives that way. But rather than reflecting on the causes of the changing of the guard and trying to figure out how to stop it, we should be looking ahead, considering what these alterations of leadership will mean for our government and the future of our country. Will voters turn out for the May primaries and the November general election if the choices on their ballots are largely unknown and unproven? What will be the fate of fast-fading political center? Are "moderates" becoming an endangered species? Today, the Iowa caucuses will give us a preview of the answers to these questions and possibly even the ultimate result of Campaign '96, in all of its mud-slinging, back-biting partisan glory. From now until next fall, when this made-for-the-media spectacle finally ends, the impending presidential contest will likely make the major newspapers and the evening news at least once each day -- even if nothing special has happened. This strategy-oriented coverage of the daily horse race to the White House will probably succeed in turning prospective voters off to the political process, not informing them about their options or exhorting them to take an active role in the experiment we call American democracy. In fact, the "typical people" quoted by reporters are relatively unresponsive to the high-magnitude changes now occurring in the House and Senate chambers. They seem more impressed by billionaire quasi-candidate Steve Forbes, whose ability to pour his own money into a dark horse campaign for the nation's highest office may just buy him a new job for the next four years. That's downright frightening. What would the Founding Fathers say? And who's next -- Donald Trump? I guess it means all men are created equal, until one pulls out his checkbook, fattened by a family fortune, and starts putting his John Hancock on legal tender instead of government charters and acts. When you can no longer play the game in which you've trained to excell, or you no longer enjoy it, you have every right to move on and find another team to play with or another game to substitute into, with new rules or new objectives or a new strategy for victory. Politicians are no different than athletes; standard activities no doubt become fossilizing after repetition over months, years and decades, whether they consist of of speech-making and policy planning or sprinting and weight-lifting. The problems begin when the old game becomes outmoded, and its new and improved version offers no choice but compromising your principles and participating against your will -- or quitting and trying to effect change from outside of the system. Neither of these options, obviously, is anywhere close to ideal. The old-time politicians, who treated their life-long career as a craft, will be analyzing their successors from outside the ring come Inauguration Day 1997. But the repercussions of this loss of leadership will be seen first in the progress of Campaign '96, and in the probable "outsider" identity of America's next chief executive.