The Presidency "The Greatest Eclipse"

By Hugh Sidey

They came by the hundreds last week, creating limo-lock on Georgetown's elegant N Street. They gossiped under the Renoir and the Van Gogh in Pamela Harriman's salon. They sipped their Chablis in tribute to one of this age's truly great Democrats, Clark Clifford, and his new book, Counsel to the President, the story of a half-century of political grandeur. But one prominent Democrat, looking beyond the evening's scheduled gaiety, said, "We are witnessing the greatest eclipse of a political party in this country in our history."

How did it happen that these old Truman-Kennedy-Johnson-Carter warriors, who rose out of anger and even hunger, crossed over into the sated land of Republicans? Victims of their own remarkable success, maybe. "Must be $50 billion on the hoof here," muttered a Kennedy veteran. Mrs. Harriman, one of the wealthiest Americans, is a kind of housemother to the Democratic Party. Megamillion lawyers like Lloyd Cutler, once counsel to President Carter, were a dime or so a dozen. "It's hard to get fire in the belly over health insurance when it's stuffed with pate," quipped the Kennedy man.

The Democrats have always had patrons and participants of great wealth, but they were guided by a lot of folks off the streets and shop floors. Fifty years ago, the caustic, rumpled Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas would stomp through such gatherings reminding people that he rode the rods out of Yakima, Wash., to go to Columbia Law School in 1922. Twenty-five years ago, Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey palmed his way around the stately chambers in the righteous sheen of polyester. And a labor leader like George Meany still had the hands of a plumber. If there was anybody at the Harriman reception who had done physical labor in the past 10 years, or now makes less than six figures, he was parking the Mercedes for the guests.

"Where's Bob Strauss?" one attendee inquired. Strauss, once the Democratic National Committee chairman, was more recently the middleman who raked off an $8 million fee for setting up the purchase of an American movie company by a Japanese high-tech firm -- just the kind of deal Democrats used to excoriate. "Probably in Japan," came the answer. A couple of wags took estimates on the cost of Clifford's flawless Glen plaid suit. High estimate: $2,000. Low: $1,200.

Although the partygoers described the evening as "upbeat and happy," it was in reality a melancholy event. Clifford, who became a latter-day banker, is now embroiled in controversy over his ties to a foreign bank convicted of money laundering. Nor was that the only cloud hovering over this Democratic Olympus. Alan Cranston, criticized by the Senate ethics committee for his shady dealings in the savings and loan scandal, showed up at the book party. So did Ted Kennedy, wrapped in the shadow of the Palm Beach sex scandal.

Next day, as if to underscore the Democratic Party's dispiriting prospects, the aging, battle-scarred George McGovern announced at a National Press Club luncheon that he would not run again for President. He had, he explained, consulted Richard Nixon, of all people, who told McGovern he should pose two questions to himself: Did he have something to say that others would not say? And would they listen? George McGovern had no sure answers and admitted it.