MISSOURI COMMENTARY: WHAT'S THERE TO DO IF PUBLIC IS ASLEEP?

The congressional summer recess serves as a halftime intermission for the Senate hearings on campaign finance misdeeds and reform. one would think, after testimony about the activities of Charlie Trie, John Uang and Mr. Wu on the Democratic side and Haley Barbour on the Republican side, that the public would as the very least want to know more, or demand action to correct, the fund-raising excesses of the 1996 campaign.

The public, however, doesn't give a damn. While the Democratic transgressions are far more numerous than those of the GOP, polling data indicate that voters generally believe both parties are equally suspect in their fund-raising pursuits.

The public finds nothing virtuous about either party. Most believe that both Republicans and Democrats have "For Sale" signs outside their headquarters. The public is convinced that it has always been this way.

In terms of improper conduct, the 1996 campaign irregularities constitute a major scandal. The public doesn't care. The public is bored to death about the entire process of politics. It is precisely this turned--off frame of mid that makes campaign-spending reform a lost cause. Presumably, it will take even more sordid money-raising abuses in future elections to arouse our somnolent citizenry.

The president and members of Congress talk a good game about cleaning up the mess. Emphasize the word "talk". Both parties appear to be ready to repeat, in the election of 2000, the sordidness that comes from unlimited "soft" money. Foreign donations may not be the attention-grabber in the next campaign, but rest assured that there will be some other obscenity to replace it.

Presidential and congressional candidates like to decry fund-raising excesses by day while running around shaking the money tree at night.

Some politicians find fund-raising a challenge -- like generals drafting and orchestrating a strategy in war. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich fall into the category. The unseemly nature of the fund-raising process is outweighed by the gamesmanship of the campaign.

Clinton is the most resilient president of modern times. His basic political skills are extraordinary. The ABC/Washington Post poll recently had his job approval rating at 64 percent. The Post ran the survey results on its front page, while two stories on the Senate campaign-finance hearings survey were buried deep in the paper. Other polls have Clinton below 64, but still at record levels. At this moment, Clinton is in the popularity range of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower.

No president has been so beset by continuing adverse personal publicity. Yet, Clinton's job approval rating remains high. Just as the American people are bored with campaign-spending excesses, so too they seem uninterested in the accusations against the Clintons. The same polls that show a plurality of Americans believing the Clintons have acted improperly also show that a majority of voters has little interest in the charges leveled against them. In bygone eras, a barrage of similar allegations would have decimated most any other president, but not today -- so deep runs the cynicism in this country.

When Congress returns in September, Republicans believe that the second half of the Senate hearings will be different. They that the fund-raising abuses of he 1996 election will ultimately sink in. Absent a bombshell or a John Dean, it's hard to imagine testimony that bored the public to death in the first half will suddenly become electrifying and attention-grabbing in the second half.

As time drags on and on, Whitewater seems less likely to produce the indictments that some Republicans once anticipated. Now, there may be a scathing commentary on the Clintons by Ken Starr -- to be filed away with all the other allegations of impropriety.

When cynicism grips the body politic to the extent it has in our nation today, it is hard to see the public getting excited about changing or reforming anything. If the money excesses of the 1996 presidential and congressional campaigns didn't turn your stomach, what will it take.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.