Help Government Diet A Little Longer

If you think this has been a rough-and-tumble campaign year, you’re right. Don’t let that keep you away from the polls, however. Some countries wage their power struggles with machine guns. We Americans do it with words. Hard words. And we settle the struggle with votes. Hard votes. Those who complain about the force of the battle - none of us enjoys the sight of mud - risk forgetting what’s at stake.

There is good reason for the passion in politics. Elections test the values that shape our national character. They chart the course for government, which takes a third of our earnings, regulates our lives and businesses, and runs an array of services from defense to schools, welfare to federal judges.

These things deserve debate.

And in spite of the effort by illusionists like Dick Morris, Tuesday’s election presents voters with a choice between two fundamentally different styles of governing. It’s a choice between the power of central government and the creative risk-takings of individual freedom, state and local innovation and private entrepreneurism. Can Americans be trusted usually to do the right thing? Or do we need a vast, costly bureaucracy to order that we do?

It should not escape voters’ notice that central-government fans like Bill Clinton experience an election-year conversion and preach an eerily conservative gospel. There’s a reason: Voters are increasingly concerned about governmental excess and failure - its deficits, its bankrupt entitlements, its economy-stifling taxes and regulations and the tragic legacy of its social programs.

The course voters chose two years ago has only started to redirect policy - and it’s a course that easily could be reversed. President Clinton, for example, has hinted he’ll roll back welfare reform next year - after he takes a few more bows for signing it this year.

Certainly, some conservatives want to go too far, a fact reflected in our endorsement of Democrat Gary Locke for Washington state governor.

But after decades of excess, government can afford to spend a few more years backing off. Congress did make some headway - in deficit reduction, welfare, farm subsidies and more. But a serious lightening of government’s load and a re-evaluation of its failures are likely to occur only if the conservatives we elect are authentic ones.

This is not a partisan issue. It’s a good government issue. Americans need many services government performs. But it can do them better. The fresh air of change blew through Congress and the statehouses two years ago and the healthy push to re-evaluate decades of governmental growth and increasingly heavy taxes has barely gotten off the ground.

Can you be trusted with more freedom? Then vote for it.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board