According to Jiri Dienstbier, the U.N. special representative on human rights in the former Yugoslavia, “the spring ethnic cleansing of ethnic Albanians accompanied by murders, torture, looting and burning of houses has been replaced by the fall ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Romas, Bosniaks and other non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities.”

I was in San Francisco on April 15 when President Clinton told the American Society of Newspaper Editors: “We are in Kosovo because we care about saving lives and we care about the character of the multi-ethnic, post-Cold War world.” And just in case we didn’t get it, he repeated that our military involvement was guided by “the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity.”

But Kosovo is fast becoming a state based entirely on ethnicity. According to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, 150,000 non-Albanians have fled Kosovo since NATO declared victory — the result of what the high commissioner called “a disturbing pattern” of killings, beatings and kidnappings promulgated by Albanians. About as far as you can get from “multi-ethnic, tolerant and inclusive.”

Of the 40,000 Serbs once living in Pristina, only 400 are left; 40,000 to 50,000 Gypsies have fled; the 300 Croats whose families had lived in the province for 700 years left in October for Dubrovnik; and the president of Pristina’s Jewish community fled to Belgrade, condemning the “pogrom against the non-Albanian population.”

And not only does the Kosovo Liberation Army remain armed and murderous, it now has political legitimacy. A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe cites case after case of KLA members spearheading the campaign of terror against non-Albanians.

Yet the president had the gall to stand at his press conference last Wednesday and include in a list of his foreign policy successes “Kosovo, which I am very, very proud of.” Even Hashim Thaci, the thuggish Kosovar Albanian leader, acknowledges that “the spiral of violence and insecurity is rising.”

But the president of the United States is proud; the forces of the loyal opposition are silent; and the media, now that the “Crisis in Kosovo!” theme music has been filed away, has moved on to more pressing matters like the latest minute-to-minute New Hampshire polls and the books George W. is or isn’t having read to him.

The Albanian atrocities are not just going unacknowledged and unlamented — they’re going uninvestigated. The International War Crimes Tribunal is mandated to investigate only crimes committed “during the armed conflict in Kosovo.” And since, according to the NATO powers, the province is now enjoying the fruits of peace, the murderers can go on murdering with impunity. They know that the only retribution they have to fear is from the toothless U.N. police force.

In his triumphant visit to Kosovo last month, the president waxed lyrical to the flag-waving throngs: “The time for fighting has passed … The international community will stand by you.” In fact, the fighting has grown only more bitter, and the international community hasn’t even sent the U.N. mission in Kosovo the $25 million it needs to continue paying for public services and salaries. “That’s the price of half a day’s bombing,” lamented a senior U.N. official.

Our political class is all too adept at refusing to address any crisis that does not score high in this week’s polls — especially when it has prematurely declared victory. The energy is expended instead on orchestrating Presidential Pyrrhic Victory Tours and releasing State Department reports that whitewash the bloody truth. And on the other side of the aisle, the Republican front-runner gives a highly touted foreign policy speech that does not even mention Kosovo. Sic transit gloria Milosevic.

So the legitimate question of when America should intervene and when its intervention does more harm than good is left unexamined or reduced to a caricature about isolationism. Kosovo, meanwhile, remains like one of the thousands of cluster bomblets NATO planes left behind — deadly and ready to claim more innocent victims every day.

Meanwhile, the media focused on the easy debate of whether the Seattle authorities were unprepared for the protesters (they were) and whether they subsequently overreacted (they did). In between, they giggled uncomprehendingly and made lame jokes about topless lesbian sea turtles.

Sure, a ski-masked anarchist trashing a Starbucks makes for a better front-page photo than a few thousand demonstrators peacefully protesting the subversion of democracy — but it was a classic case of reporters who can’t see the deforestation for the tree-huggers. So in the days following the Battle in Seattle, much was written about the “what” and very little about the “why.”

But the why is what we’re left with now that everyone’s gone home. The most significant aspect of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle is that they embodied the widespread fears and anxieties of millions of Americans who do not share the prevailing assumption that these are the best of times, and who in effect represent America’s unrecognized third party, made up of those so disgusted with the system that they have even given up on voting.

Our leaders’ hubristic mindset can’t even conceive of protest amid a 4-percent unemployment rate and an 11,000-point Dow. Is that why the conference organizers and the local authorities were completely caught off guard by the level and intensity of the protests?

It’s not like they were a secret. They were more than eight months in the planning, discussed and developed through the Internet, announced in a full-page ad in the New York Times signed by 60 anti-WTO groups and preceded by a traveling caravan that visited 18 cities, holding teach-ins on civil disobedience before arriving in Seattle. Not exactly an underground operation.

The protesters left Seattle but very likely will take their message to the streets of Philadelphia and Los Angeles during the national party conventions, because last week proved that’s the only way they’ll be heard.

“We’ll be prepared for whatever demonstrators may be planning to do here,” says California Gov. Gray Davis. But maintaining law and order is one thing; responding to a fundamental challenge to the political order is quite another. Downplaying it is definitely not going to make it go away.

The emerging populist alliance cuts through both parties and across generations. It traces its roots not to the street protests of the ’60s but to the progressive reform movement of the ’90s — the 1890s. “The humblest citizen in all the land,” said populist William Jennings Bryan in his 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech, “when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.” In “The Age of Reform,” Richard Hofstadter analyzes Robert La Follette’s watershed address in the U.S. Senate in 1908: “He attempted to prove, with careful documentation from the interlocking directorates of American corporations, that fewer than one hundred men, acting in concert, controlled the great business interests of the country. ‘Does anyone doubt,’ he asked, ‘the community of interest that binds these men together?’”

Protest organizer Mike Dolan drew similar distinctions. “The division that matters now is no longer between the two parties but between corporatists and populists,” he told Marc Cooper on Radio Nation. He defined “this historic confrontation” as one “between civil society and corporate rule.”

“This has not stopped our work,” said World Trade Organization director-general Mike Moore as the talks were collapsing around him. “Our working lunch went ahead as scheduled. The plenary will start at 3, as scheduled.” And they accomplished nothing — not as scheduled.

“The question is, who elected these 50,000 people out there?” asked Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute, clearly forgetting that protesters protest to keep in check the power of those elected. And, come to think of it, who elected the WTO bureaucrats?

The unchecked power of the few over the economic and political life of our nation — indeed, over the very lives of average Americans — was the target of both the turn-of-the-century progressives and the end-of-this-century’s protesters. If anything, the arrogance and incomprehension are even greater today.

There is no doubt that the authorities will be better prepared next time. There is also no doubt there will be a next time. The corruption of our system and the cluelessness of our leaders guarantee it.

“Do I insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that?” said McCain. “No, I don’t.” Now, I
have too much respect for the senator as a man of deeply and passionately held convictions to believe
that. Personally, I could never trust a man who does not occasionally see red.

Unfortunately, by denying the charges instead of laughing at them, McCain legitimized this line of
questioning. Haven’t we had enough of politicians falling into the trap of answering questions about
their private lives by issuing fake denials or splitting hairs? Are we now going to have to endure
finger-wagging declarations: “I did not get pissed at that woman!?”

Thank goodness the media has put aside its silly obsession with finding out where the presidential
candidates stand on the issues of the day and are placing the focus squarely where it belongs: on the
candidates’ personal peccadilloes. Wondering who to vote for? Ask Miss Manners.

It takes a real lack of knowledge of history to claim that a temper is a disqualifier for high office.
Even the revered George Washington was known to blow a gasket now and then. One Washington biography
describes a time during the Battle of Monmouth when he lashed out at Gen. Charles Lee so furiously
that “the leaves shook on the trees.”

Just as we were getting used to the media’s fixation on whether our politicians are adulterers, it now appears
they’re out to uncover whether a candidate is the kind of guy you’d want to go on a date with. It’s as
if they’re trying less to educate us about the candidates than fix us up with them.

All this is a perfect example of what G.K. Chesterton warned us about: “If there is one thing worse
than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.” But now
that we’ve started down this road, in the same way that we had former lovers crawling out of the
woodwork to tell tales on our philandering politicians, we’ll have complete strangers spilling the
beans about the ill-mannered behavior they’ve observed. How long before we get an eyewitness account
(“Customer Jane Doe”) of McCain chewing out his dry cleaner because he wasn’t able to get a coffee
stain off the senator’s favorite shirt? (“He really blew his stack,” said an unnamed but highly placed
source familiar with the stain. “He bent a wire hanger and stormed out.”)

Well, far be it from me to buck a hot journalistic trend. So, as a public service, I’ve compiled a
list of the foul dirt slipped to me by the opposition research teams of various presidential
campaigns. Here’s a sneak peek at the scandalous revelations — I mean, meaningful indicators of
leadership — sure to rock the race for the White House in the months to come:

George W. Bush: Has trouble remembering names, especially foreign ones with lots of consonants. (Regrettably this leaked out before I could break it in my column.) Might consider balancing the
ticket by choosing Alex Trebek as his VP.

Al Gore: Isn’t always careful about separating paper from plastic in his garbage bags.

Steve Forbes: Not sure he has the table manners to be president. Frequently confuses salad fork with
entree fork.

Orrin Hatch: Ever since the Clarence Thomas hearings has developed a taste for porn. Owns the entire filmography of Long Dong Silver on DVD.

Bill Bradley: Not sure he has the personal hygiene to be president. Reportedly sweats a lot. Only
flosses biannually and once, when he ran out of soap, used shampoo instead, confiding to a friend that
it was “just as good.”

Gary Bauer: Never on time. Sets his clocks five minutes fast, but then takes five more minutes waking
up because he knows they’re fast.

Pat Buchanan: Cheap, cheap, cheap. Known to take dates to Der Wienerschnitzel and show off by ordering
in German.

Had we used these new, refined criteria for selecting our leaders we would have been spared the
unpleasantness of, say, Winston Churchill (drank too much and smoked foul-smelling cigars indoors) or
Andrew Jackson (prone to putting his muddy boots on White House furniture).

Politics isn’t a charm-school cotillion. I’ll take impassioned policies over impeccable manners every time.

Like a clueless fireman, Clinton seems intent on directing his high-powered hose at a smoldering weenie roast while an out-of-control forest fire blazes all around him. There are at the moment more than 11 million children in America living not just without prescription drug benefits but without any health insurance at all. And despite the thriving economy, things are only getting worse: The percentage of uninsured children rose to 15.4 percent last year. Among poor children under age 6, nearly one in four has no insurance.

“The moral test of government,” said Hubert Humphrey, who helped establish Medicare 34 years ago, “is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the unemployed.”

If that’s the case, our health priorities have definitely been stuck in the Twilight Zone. And if you wonder why we’ve done a much better job taking care of our senior citizens than our children, the answer is provided by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate: Voting by those 65 and older is actually going up, while turnout at the other end of the age scale continues to plummet. And, of course, children can’t vote at all.

In other words, Clinton’s latest battle is more about filling ballot boxes than filling prescriptions. “Democrats lost senior men in ’94 and ’96,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “Even more important, 1998 was the first time that Democrats have lost senior women. We have to get that constituency back.” It’s no wonder that Bill Bradley and Al Gore are vying for this prized voting bloc with their own competing proposals for the most unlimited prescription drug coverage.

Maybe the answer is for poor, uninsured kids to organize and create a junior version of the AARP — the FVA (Future Voters of America); or, perhaps, the FTA (Future Thugs of America). Their motto could be, “Help us now — or we’ll make your retirement very unpleasant!”

Not only is the focus on more prescription drugs for the elderly a misguided priority, it also overlooks the fact that according to a study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, 6.6 million elderly Americans were actually being overdrugged — prescribed too many drugs or inappropriate ones that “placed them at risk of such adverse side effects as memory loss, the inability to think clearly, and sedation, leading to falls and serious injuries.”

In his speech announcing the first federal survey of prescription drug prices, the president cited as an example “one of the most popular drugs for lowering cholesterol,” which costs $44 for 60 tablets in Canada, but $102 in the States.

“Today,” Clinton said, “prescription drugs can accomplish what once could be done only through surgery, at far less pain and far less cost.” But the president and most politicians dealing with health care are living in the past. Just a couple of days earlier, Dr. Dean Ornish, founder and director of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, was conducting a bipartisan retreat with congressional leaders to introduce them to his revolutionary — and clinically proven — concept that a program of diet, exercise and lifestyle changes can often accomplish what is now being done through surgery and drugs.

It is the first program of its kind to demonstrate a reversal in cases of severe heart disease, the No. 1 killer of Americans. For five years Ornish has fought to make his program an option available to Medicare recipients as an alternative to more expensive and dangerous medical treatments. The good news is that the Health Care Financing Administration, with the president’s support in this case, has finally agreed to fund a demonstration project for up to 1,800 Medicare patients with coronary artery disease.

“We must focus on health care, not just disease care,” Ornish told me. “Drugs frequently can be avoided if people make changes in lifestyle. We need to teach the elderly how to do this. It would be more compassionate, more competent and more cost-effective.”

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who, together with his political arch enemy, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., convened the congressional retreat, is enthusiastic. “Clearly, the tens of billions of dollars that we spend on health care is after the fact, after the disease,” he told me. “Dean Ornish’s demonstration project actually makes surgery unnecessary. But it’s going to take a long time to educate this country and turn it around to take a serious look at preventive care.”

The alternative is watching exploding health-care costs devour an ever-greater portion of our national budget while more and more people join the ranks of the uninsured. And that would be a very tough pill to swallow.

Teddy Roosevelt carried on in Disraeli’s tradition, speaking about the perils of “predatory wealth” and the “abuses of the criminal rich,” and challenging his fellow Republicans to support such progressive policies as child-labor laws and government inspection of food. Since the presidency of the other Roosevelt, poverty and inequality have become potent Democratic issues.

But New Democrats seem to have gotten tired of them. The Democratic National Committee went so far as to revise its party platform in 1996 to strike out the promise that the party “will continue to help those who cannot help themselves.” Was this really that offensive a statement? Would this really have cost Democrats votes?

It might be time for them to ask themselves why they are in public life if they agree with the president that “most things are going right for our country.” This is a chilling statement for anyone who’s keeping an eye on the other America: nearly 700,000 layoffs in 1998, 56 percent higher than the year before; the biggest surge in unemployment claims in six years; and a study of four Northwest states that revealed more than half of the available jobs do not pay a living wage.

At the same time, corporate America has never been more robust. In fact, since 1990 — the supposed end of the Greed Decade — the pay of CEOs has gone up more than 440 percent. While the conventional wisdom holds that America is thriving, it’s hard to escape the notion that the United States has been torn in two — divided between a moneyed elite that has greatly benefited from globalization and an increasing number of citizens who have been left choking on the dust of the bulls as they rush past.

In 1964, 36 million Americans lived in poverty. Thirty-five years and a War on Poverty later, 35.6 million Americans live in poverty.

The Casey Foundation’s “Kids Count” report, released this spring, identified 9.2 million children “growing up with a collection of disadvantages that are cause for exceptional alarm” and focused on “the persistent exclusion of far too many of our children and families from the full promise of American life.” “Kids Count” directly contradicts the rosy data being spun from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue by reporting the significant increase in the number of children — 5.6 million — in families of the working poor. Despite the economic boom and an unemployment rate at a 25-year low, the U.S. child poverty rate remains at 21 percent — the highest in the developed world.

This spring, the United Way of Los Angeles released its “Tale of Two Cities” report, spotlighting the growing disparities in the richest city in the nation and concluding that “economic conditions for children have not been so precarious since the Great Depression.” One out of three children in Los Angeles lives below the poverty level, the number of abused children placed in foster care has risen 86 percent in the past decade and even with the recent drop in violent crime, homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under 18.

According to officials of 30 major cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, “The strong economy has had very little positive impact on hunger and homelessness.” Ninety-three percent of those responding expected requests for emergency shelter to increase further next year. Second Harvest, the biggest national network of food banks, says its clientele is growing by 10 percent a year, a rate not yet rivaling Starbucks, but demonstrating the growing divide. A flurry of reports over the last few weeks documents the split:

• According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, among families headed by single women, the poorest fifth lost an average of $577 a year in income and benefits between 1995 and 1997.

• Another center report projected that the after-tax income gap between rich and poor will reach record levels in 1999, with the poorest fifth of Americans left with 9 percent less than they had in 1977 and the richest fifth with 43 percent more.

• A study by the Children’s Defense Fund shows that in one year, from 1996 to 1997, the number of children living in extreme poverty — defined as less than half of the poverty level — rose by 26 percent among single-mother families.

• According to the Urban Institute, the median annual income of welfare recipients, including those with children, who left the rolls for jobs between 1995 and 1997 was $13,788. So they escaped welfare but not poverty.

I was asked during a recent speech at the Congressional Faith and Politics Institute what we could do to raise the profile of poverty in this country. “Put a Republican back in the White House,” I replied — not because he would do more for the poor, but because their champions on the left would reunite with their consciences and instantly regain their voices.

During the ’80s, Democrats were quick to deride Ronald Reagan’s claims of “Morning in America,” with New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously, and rightly, chiding the Great Communicator’s vision of “a shining city on a hill” by saying: “There is despair, Mr. President, in faces you never see, in the places you never visit in your shining city.” But Cuomo, and many of the most vocal Democrats protesting in the ’80s, suddenly came down with laryngitis in the ’90s, their cries of outrage replaced by cocktail chatter about the soaring NASDAQ.

It was the original “compassionate conservative,” Teddy Roosevelt, who called the presidency a “bully pulpit.” Unfortunately, the president has failed to use that pulpit to rally Americans to care about the poor. Talk about poverty has been replaced by endless nattering about “this era of unprecedented prosperity,” as the president repeatedly calls it. “Finally the rising tide of our economy is lifting all boats,” Clinton said in a radio address this year.

Prosperity is undeniably the theme of campaign 2000. The candidates are dishing it out like burgers and watermelon at a straw-poll picnic. In fact, listening to them talk, it’s as if they’re all auditioning not for leader of the free world, but for Regis Philbin’s gig on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

In announcing his candidacy last week (candidates are now allotted, apparently by federal law, roughly half a dozen “announcements,” which the media obligingly cover), Bill Bradley repeatedly used the P-word. First he said he was running “to guard the economic fundamentals of our prosperity,” presumably the way he used to cover players in the NBA. He then called for “a deeper prosperity … a prosperity that makes us feel rich inside as well as out.”

What that means is anybody’s guess, but even as platitude it’s notable. Do you remember the days when campaign rhetoric at least tended to be about something noble, even inspirational? But “making us feel rich inside and out”? That’s more Tony Robbins than Robert Kennedy.

Vice President Al Gore wants us to know that he, too, can pander to our noble love of money. “I want to keep our prosperity going,” Gore said in New Hampshire, “and I know how to do it.” He even vowed to make America the “world capital of prosperity” — which begs the question: Where is the capital now? Russia? North Korea?

Not wanting to seem soft on prosperity, George W. Bush has gone on a prosperity jag himself, determined not to cede one inch of the humming economy to his Democratic rivals. “Some in this current administration think they’ve invented prosperity,” he said. “But they didn’t invent prosperity any more than they invented the Internet.” In his announcement speech (his third, I believe), Bush used “prosperous” or “prosperity” 15 times. To hear him tell it, prosperity is the panacea.

“We must be prosperous to keep the peace,” he said, suggesting that prosperity can even protect us from “terror and missiles and madmen.” That’s some bull market! Maybe by the time the year is out, we’ll hear that the market can heal the sick and infirm. Or turn water into stock options.

Of course, Steve Forbes is the poster child for prosperity. It’s his birthright — and lately he has been railing against Alan Greenspan and “the high priests of finance at the Fed.” The current prosperity is apparently just not prosperous enough.

Like one of those single-issue cable networks, the White House has given us the 24-hour Boom Channel — All Prosperity, All The Time (with, of course, lots and lots of commercials).

The problem with this prosperity parade is the assumption that keeping the good times roaring will lead to everyone enjoying them. The language of the marketplace has eclipsed all other forms of rhetoric. Don’t worry, they’re saying, we’re not going to ask you to even think of community and civic responsibility or anything that is not in your direct, economic self-interest — and, somehow, a nation that we can be proud of will materialize.

Even the president’s Poor-a-pa-Looza summer poverty tour was conducted not as an appeal to the nation’s conscience but as a profit-making opportunity. “This is not about charity,” said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, “it’s about investment. There’s money to be made.”

It’s instructive to remember that leadership hasn’t always been reduced to economics and didn’t always answer only to the laws of supply and demand. Thirty-two years ago, when Robert Kennedy launched his poverty tour, he shocked the nation’s conscience with television pictures of hungry children in his arms. He had faith that if the American people knew what was going on, they would respond with something other than fear of inflation.

“When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, something died in America,” said civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. “Something died in all of us.” And Clinton buried whatever died with his flaccid rhetoric, a pale mockery of Kennedy’s stirring words. It’s like watching a Vegas lounge show where ersatz legends offer up feeble renditions of your all-time favorites. They’ve got the look, they’ve got the moves - what’s missing is the soul.

Among Republicans, Bush is the candidate who speaks most frequently about poverty. He talks of “prosperity with a purpose” and promises “to make sure no one is left out and no one is left behind.” Bush, of course, has campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” a description that has been attacked as “redundant” and “defensive” by his Republican competitors, jealous that he has laid claim to the moral center of the 2000 race. “I have ordered my staff to never — ever — utter the words ‘compassionate conservative’!” thundered Dan Quayle, obviously aware that no one, least of all himself, has any control over what the former vice president might say at any given moment.

But “cautious conservative” might be a more apt description for Bush, who is failing to seize the moment while an important legislative battle is being lost in Washington. In 1996, Reps. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., and Jim Talent, R-Mo., introduced the American Community Renewal Act, a bill that would have enabled communities to fight their own war on poverty. Through tax incentives, public housing reforms and regulatory relief, it aimed to revitalize 100 neighborhoods torn by drugs, broken families and failed public schools. And it was just the start.

The charitable tax credit was another piece of legislation that went nowhere. Carried by Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, and Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., it would have allowed families to give up to $1,000 of what they owe in taxes to a poverty-fighting charity of their choice. In one fell swoop it would have achieved three crucial objectives: First, it would have provided billions of dollars for effective grass-roots groups that at the moment are operating hand-to-mouth. Second, by focusing on poverty fighting, it would have established a hierarchy of charitable priorities. And third, it would have strengthened the frail bonds of community. In the course of deciding which poverty-fighting group to support, citizens would have had the opportunity to become more personally involved in the lives of those in need.

On the surface, it seems a long way from a thousand-dollar tax credit to rebuilding our moral muscles. But we become generous by the practice of generosity and compassionate by the practice of compassion — not by the practice of lobbying the government to be compassionate.

Just three years later, this hearty stew of solutions has been watered down to gruel. The American Community Renewal Act of 1999 would target only 20 urban and rural “renewal communities” for tax and regulatory relief. And another provision would allow individuals to roll over their IRA assets into charities without incurring a tax penalty. To make matters worse, both are locked into the Taxpayer Refund and Relief Act of 1999, which seems destined for a presidential veto.

Bush has himself proposed charitable tax credits for private and religious institutions to fight poverty, as well as grants to help mentor the children of prisoners and even the appointment of a “charity czar” to oversee those efforts. But the moment is being lost. If he does not challenge his fellow Republicans on the Hill to send President Clinton the Renewal Act legislation, unattached and uncompromised, his campaign promises will be just more talk.

Maybe the most insidious byproduct of politicians’ indifference to the plight of the poor has been a drop-off in attention from the media. During the Reagan years, the plight of the homeless was never too far away from the headlines, with the president roundly criticized for his “trickle-down” economy. But during the Clinton years, as those same trends have continued and solidified, the media has been largely silent, giving the president a free pass for his “don’t look down” economy.

According to a Village Voice report, there’s been a nationwide drop-off in column inches, frequency and prominence in the press coverage of poverty: “In the fall of 1988, The New York Times devoted 50 stories to the homeless, including five front page pieces. This year [1998] the Times has run only 10 pieces in the same period; none have begun on A-1.” Homelessness is just not an A-1 story in our present national conversation. With a warm-and-fuzzy president who feels our pain and parrots back to us what pollsters tell him we want to hear, it appeared safe to avert our eyes — and the homeless were kicked off the front page and out of our political discourse.

Which brings us to the only major policy on poverty of the Clinton years: welfare reform. A nearly 40 percent drop in welfare caseloads since the law was passed in 1996 has conveyed the false impression that although the poor will always be with us, there’s no longer enough of them to deserve our attention. But what will become of the 4.9 million welfare recipients who left the rolls as they face declining prospects for work? “Welfare reform has done better at moving families off the rolls than it has at moving families out of poverty,” said Lawrence Aber, director of Columbia University’s Center for Children in Poverty. In other words, “welfare reform” has been great for swelling the ranks of the working poor.

Meanwhile, the real work of helping the poor goes on nearly unnoticed. Deborah Constance, who founded A Place Called Home in the middle of South Central Los Angeles, was a successful real estate agent who went on to create a safe haven for children and teenagers in the middle of the violence and drugs that surround them. In a precinct that reported 134 robberies, 11 homicides, 134 felony assaults and 10 attempted murders in one month, A Place Called Home is equipped to handle as many as 1,000 children — with no government funding.

“The problem cannot be solved from afar with a media campaign, or other safe solutions operating from a distance,” says Jeffrey Canada, who runs 43 children’s programs from Harlem to Hell’s Kitchen. “The only way we’re going to make a difference is by placing well-trained and caring adults in the middle of what can only be called a free-fire zone in our poorest communities.”

But instead of using the bully pulpit to lead us to take up the fight like Constance and Canada have done, Clinton has been lulling us to sleep, waxing lyrical about his successes: “Now you see the signs of the transformation everywhere,” he said recently. “Mothers collecting their mail with a little more pride because they know they’ll see a bank statement, not a welfare check; children going to school with their heads held a little higher.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, who heads the Call to Renewal, a coalition to combat poverty, paints a very different picture than the one painted by the president and the presidential candidates. “The new icon of poverty,” he told me, “is the working mother with children. I think of the woman a colleague of mine saw at a Burger King recently. She was busing tables, but kept going back to a table in the corner where two kids were sitting. She did this several times before it became apparent that she was their mother and was supervising their homework. That woman at the Burger King is supposed to be our success story.”

The real battle line of the first presidential election of the new millennium will be drawn between those who answer to their corporate donors and those who answer to the woman at the Burger King.