ampaign issue No. 1 should still be ''the economy, stupid.'' But too many economic issues important to ordinary voters are not being addressed by either party.
Bill Clinton won the 1992 election because he promised to improve the living standards of ordinary Americans. President Clinton has partly redeemed that pledge, though not in the way that candidate Clinton promised.
Prosperity returned, but not via increased public spending - Clinton's 1993 ''stimulus package.'' Nor did we get the universal health insurance that Clinton boldly promised the voters; this past week the Census reported that more Americans are uninsured than ever.
Instead we got a Republican-style boom, driven by an entente with the Federal Reserve, whose fruits include a roaring stock market, a new, unimagined world of Internet commerce, a balanced federal budget, and near full employment.
Clinton indeed ended ''welfare as we know it,'' but with a Republican reform program that is succeeding mainly because the economy is currently scarce of workers. And federal domestic spending relative to GDP is at a three-decade low.
So where does this leave economic issues as we begin the election campaign of 2000? In one sense, though liberals hated him for it, Clinton has done us a favor by mooting most of the issues that Republicans once used to pillory Democrats:
The budget deficit is gone. Welfare is passe. And, (though the credit goes more to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan) we've reached the economic grail of full employment without inflation. Republicans no longer can attack Democrats by invoking the Carter years of stagflation, gas lines, skyrocketing home heating costs, and 20 percent interest rates. In addition, Clinton outmaneuvered the GOP to save and strengthen two Democratic crown jewels, Social Security and Medicare.
Tactically at least, many economic issues still in play are cutting largely in a Democratic direction. This week in Congress, Republicans were using procedural maneuvers to delay or encumber votes on a patients' bill of rights and a higher minimum wage, because they knew public opinion favored the Democrats' proposals.
Republicans also backed off plans to bestow a costly, regressive tax cut that most voters didn't want. And they jettisoned an embarrassing maneuver to meet the budget targets by cutting tax credits for the working poor.
Incredibly, their own front-runner, George W. Bush, faulted House Republicans for proposing to balance the budget ''on the backs of the poor.'' If Clinton has governed as a moderate economic conservative, the presumptive Republican candidate is sounding surprisingly liberal.
In one sense, we are seeing something of a convergence between the two parties on economic questions, and in a manner that tends to favor the Democrats. But in another sense, this apparent consensus leaves out several important issues.
Both parties see eye-to-eye on free trade. But neither party is addressing how trade with very poor countries undermines social standards at home.
Though Democratic contenders Gore and Bradley have proposed piecemeal health insurance bills, neither party is seriously addressing the crisis in heath coverage. Even with a patients' bill of rights, health coverage is becoming less affordable, less reliable, and insurance plans keep shifting more of the costs to consumers.
Thanks to the economic boom, housing prices keep outpacing family purchasing power for ordinary Americans who are not Internet millionaires. But neither party has any kind of housing policy.
The biggest pocketbook problem facing young families is the struggle to reconcile the challenges of work and family caregiving. That key economic (and emotional) question is not being debated at all.
And while there is a strong case that an economic boom is a good time to restore public investment, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are willing to lift the budget caps of the 1997 balanced budget deal that are now revealed as overkill. Rather, endless surpluses have become a sacrosanct premise of fiscal policy.
In sum, there will be less fractiousness and more consensus than usual in the 2000 election, at least as economic questions are concerned. And, paradoxically, because Clinton spent both terms tacking to the right, the 2000 economic debates will be on terms slightly more to the left.
But many of the most pressing pocketbook questions will be off the table entirely. This is unhealthy - and far too important to leave to the fringe party of professional wrestlers, Hollywood fabulists, real estate moguls, and Hitler apologists.
History shows that when good times suddenly turn bad, such creatures get a serious hearing. Republicans and Democrats take notice.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
