AMERICA'S MOOD SWING

By Richard Lacayo

AS HE DEPARTED LAST WEEK FROM A PRESIdential race he had never quite entered, Colin Powell was careful not to rule out a career in politics somewhere down the line. "The future is the future,'' he said. Well, it used to be. By the very fact of Powell's absence, the future is suddenly looking a lot like the past. Dole vs. Clinton, the '96 matchup that seemed inevitable until Powell made it seem otherwise, is back again in its familiar guise as Most Likely Scenario. It's a whole old ball game.

Or is it? For the moment, most of the Americans who flocked to Powell will retreat to their political default mode. Powell Republicans are reclaimed mostly by Robert Dole. Powell Democrats drift back to Bill Clinton. But having been beguiled by the dream of a third way, voters won't go happily, and quite a few will be ready to run off again with any newcomer who talks their language. Take your pick. Newt Gingrich, Jesse Jackson, Ross Perot or one of his surrogates. Some late bloomer in the New Hampshire primary field. It will be a while before the restless American electorate has sorted out its discontents and settled on its candidates.

With so many voters seated uncomfortably in the slots labeled Clinton and Dole, TIME and the Cable News Network are embarking on an ambitious new kind of political poll. For the TIME/CNN Election Monitor, pollsters from Yankelovich Partners have 4,787 registered voters, an especially large sample that permits a high degree of accuracy. Between now and the 1996 election they will return to those same individuals to chart the fluctuation of their views. At each juncture TIME and CNN reporters will also talk to some of them in greater detail to see what's on their minds and how it affects their judgment of the candidates.

Their message now? Twelve months before the election, as they are just beginning to focus on presidential politics, voters are having second thoughts about the Republican revolution that was ushered in just last year. The poll results underscored the results of last week's elections, where Democrats held ground in places they had lost badly in recent years. In Kentucky, where Clinton bashing was a foolproof formula in the '94 congressional races, it didn't work for G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate Larry Forgy. The winner was Democratic Lieutenant Governor Paul Patton, who turned the tables and made Newt Gingrich the boogeyman in his campaign. In Virginia, Republicans were stopped just short of gaining control of the state legislature for the first time ever.

Republicans could still brag about the re-election of Mississippi's first-term G.O.P. Governor Kirk Fordice. And this week's gubernatorial election in Louisiana could well go to Republican Mike Foster, consolidating the G.O.P. march across the South. But what last week's voting hints at--the return of a detectable pulse among the Democrats--the Election Monitor picks up loud and clear. In nearly every region of the country, Clinton is favored over Dole. What's more surprising, voters prefer Democrats to Republicans as their choice for Congress, 45% to 41%, a reversal of the standings in 1994. You could call that the makings of a comeback. Or you could say that one year after the Republicans roared into Washington, G.O.P. fang baring has alienated nearly as many voters as Democratic business as usual once did, only faster.

In a word, it's Medicare that did it, though it's a word that stands for a larger worry that Gingrich's ax is flying too fast in all directions. True, most voters are still open to the basic Republican message of smaller government. In the Election Monitor, 50% agree that government did too many things that were better left to businesses or individuals; only 42% think it should do more to solve the country's problems. The problem is that the Republicans have begun to do what they said they would do--cut government--which is bloody in the details. So 60% of the voters surveyed say the G.O.P. is going too far.

And Medicare is one federal program that a sizable majority wants to protect. Asked if they opposed cutting back its growth to balance the budget, 74% are opposed. The Republicans have tried hard to frame their Medicare changes as a means of saving the system, not just trimming the budget or funding their tax cut. For most of the people in the Election Monitor, that message isn't getting through.

"I think there are people out there abusing the system with fraudulent claims," admits Cheryle Begin, 29, of Manchester, New Hampshire, who once worked in a nursing home. What should the politicians do? "Spend more time figuring out the problems with the system rather than cutting back. There are honest people out there and they need it.'' Begin voted for Bush in '92. She's thinking about Clinton for '96. Voters like her are key to the issue likely to dominate the election. Not the hot buttons and silly buttons of recent years: crime, abortion, drugs and flag burning. Instead it will be a basic question: Just who can be trusted to reshape the Federal Government, and how far should that go?

On the Republican side, the race is now Dole's to lose. The Election Monitor shows that Powell's departure simply clinches Dole's hold on the G.O.P. nomination--45% of the Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters questioned--with everyone else a distant second--Gramm, 8%; Buchanan, 6%, and so on.

Even so, the distant seconds were thrilled to see Powell go. Lamar Alexander, who has been limping through New Hampshire with his support in the single digits, rushed forward to claim that the G.O.P. race was now between "insider" Dole and "outsider" Alexander. "In New Hampshire, it's a Dole-and-Buchanan race,'' counters Bay Buchanan, Pat's sister and top aide. "Powell's not there, so we have our liberal, Bob Dole. We have the laser zooming in.'' Texas Senator Phil Gramm went into action on fund raising, which had been in suspended animation while the smart money waited to see if Powell would get in. Says Gramm strategist Charlie Black: "We want people to focus on the fact there are only two candidates who have national resources and a national campaign, Dole and Gramm."

In fact, right now there are only two people in the race: Dole and Clinton. And for the President too, life without Powell is just fine. In a two-man race between Clinton and Powell, voters questioned for the Election Monitor favored the general over the President, 49% to 37%. Make Dole the candidate, however, and Clinton wins handily, 48% to 42%. This is news to chill the blood of any Republican strategist.

Worse still for them is that the President shows strength in almost every part of the country. It may not be surprising that he's a winner in the Northeast (Clinton, 57%, to Dole, 37%). When they're cornered, that's one segment of the map the Democrats can count on. But Clinton also runs even with or ahead of Dole in the South. In Dole's own Midwest, it's Clinton, 45%, Dole, 47%. And in the Western Pacific states, including the 54-electoral-vote bonanza of California, Clinton is favored over Dole by a decisive 52% to 38%. Dole's clearest advantage is in the Western Mountain states, where he leads Clinton 49% to 37%. Together they have just 40 electoral votes.

Clinton's support is made up of three legs: older voters, women and African Americans. Though Dole is one of their own generation, seniors, the people most concerned about Medicare, tilt strongly to Clinton. So do women, who favor him over Dole, 53% to 37%. Dole wins the men by a smaller margin, 48% to 43%. With Powell gone, African Americans flip overwhelmingly back to Clinton.

Both parties still have to satisfy the voter whose main problem is the culture of Washington. George Cronk, 66, a retired autoworker now living in Ashley Falls, Massachusetts, voted for Clinton in '92 but went Republican last year. Now he tells the TIME/CNN pollsters he's headed back to the Democrats. "The Republicans made a lot of big promises,'' he says. "Once they got into power, they seemed to change. Term limits went out the door. They became what they replaced.'' Cronk was never a Perot voter, but he voices the big complaint of Perot's followers. For them, Republicans have not gone far enough on term limits and campaign-finance reform. Then again, neither has Clinton, so his support among those voters will be soft. In the Election Monitor, 20% of voters say they still support Perot, which is close to the 19% of the vote he got in 1992.

And for Perot too, the Powell withdrawal was a godsend. The general had already ruled out a run under the banner of Perot's new third party. Had he run instead as an unorthodox Republican, Powell the nonpolitician would have carried off a good part of the Perot vote. So Perot was happy last week to praise Powell while he buried him. On CNN's Larry King Live, Perot talked about what a fine candidate Powell would have been, while advancing his own agenda. Perot blamed "the dirty tricks, the gutter politics" for scaring off the best contenders.

To remind Perot's followers of why they rejected both parties in the first place, there is the prospect this week of a partial shutdown of the Federal Government or a temporary default on U.S. debt payment. Both could happen if the President vetoes the temporary debt-limit extension that the Republican Congress has put before him, and that requires him to approve their budget proposals. This is macho, partisan face-off time. If you're a Perot voter, or even if you're not, there could hardly be a better example of Beltway fecklessness.

So it's a good bet, given the general unhappiness with the current choices that the race could very well reopen soon. House Speaker Gingrich is making noises about jumping into the Republican field. Jackson has announced that he is considering a run as an independent. Both of them may be bluffing, of course. Gingrich wants to keep Dole from straying too far from the goals of the Contract with America, but taking the Gingrich line could hurt Dole among the centrist voters who worry about Republican radicalism. Jackson wants to keep Clinton from taking the black vote for granted.

But is Powell out of the vice presidential race? Until the Republican Convention next summer, the '96 campaign will be run in the shadow of the possibility that the reluctant warrior will still agree to be the G.O.P. running mate. And if he does, all calculations about campaign '96 go crashing to the ground once again. Lately even the future isn't what it used to be.

--Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum/ Washington and Tom Curry, Charlotte Faltermeyer and Susanne Washburn/New York

With reporting by LAURENCE I. BARRETT AND JEFFREY H. BIRNBAUM/WASHINGTON AND TOM CURRY, CHARLOTTE FALTERMEYER AND SUSANNE WASHBURN/NEW YORK