President Bill Clinton, who campaigned as a "new" -- read nonliberal -- Democrat only to govern as a hard-left one, is having an interesting effect on the party it is his job to lead. Clinton obviously came to office hoping to retool liberalism, an exhausted ideology. But instead, his stewardship is further discrediting liberalism and further shrinking its ranks.

Nowhere are these effects more evident than in the House Democratic caucus, which is coming to resemble the brutal "state of nature" described centuries ago by the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes constructed a theory of government that presupposed a pregovernmental state of nature, of constant anarchy and warfare, of rule by brute force, where "every man's hand is against every other man's," and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

To say that House Democrats in Washington are in disarray would be one of the understatements of the year. Consider:

* Last week saw this year's second defection from the House minority caucus to the majority Republicans. Rep. Greg Laughlin, a four-term Texas Democrat, followed Georgia Rep. Nathan Deal, who switched to the GOP earlier this year. Rep. Deal's switch completes an astonishing turnaround of GOP fortunes in the Peach State. In 1990, Georgia boasted nine Democrats and one lonely Republican congressman: a rising star named Newt Gingrich. Today, following the 1994 election, Rep. Deal's switch and the state's having gained a congressional seat after the 1990 census, Georgia's congressional delegation is 8-3 Republican. One result is being felt by the state's long-time senior senator, Democrat Sam Nunn, whose seat is up next year. The pro-national defense Nunn, long the pinup boy for conservative southern Democrats, is the object of widespread talk that he will be the next to either switch parties or retire.

* A June 28 on page one of The Hill newspaper, a Capitol Hill publication, portrayed a devastating picture of a House Democratic leadership unable to cope, after 40 years in the majority, with its unaccustomed minority status. Headlined "House Dems rebel against leadership," the article cites "dozens of Democratic congressmen, describing a party caucus adrift and badly divided.

"While Republicans were introducing their appropriations bill to dismantle the New Deal," the article begins, "Minority Leader Dick Gephardt called an urgent meeting of all ranking committee members to strategize. Only five of 19 showed up.

"As Speaker Newt Gingrich rallied all but two of his troops to redesign America at a recent budget retreat, Gephardt could lure fewer than 100 of 203 Democrats to his party's out-of-town conference.

"And just when Democrats had finally come up with a united position on welfare reform, its key sponsor defected to the GOP.

"`Dick is trying,' Rep. Norm Mineta, D-Calif., says, `But we still don't have a clear message and we haven't figured out how to act in the minority.'

"Asked how the Democratic leadership was faring five months after the election, veteran Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said, `Democratic what?'"

It is widely believed that before year's end there will be more defectors from House Democrats to the Republicans, perhaps as many as five or six, but almost certainly two or three. One likely defector is Rep. Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, who is also mulling a race for an open Senate seat. Another likely switcher is Rep. Mike Parker of Mississippi. Rep. Parker, who has openly worked with GOP members to effect budgetary restraints, is especially blunt. "If I were Dick Gephardt, I'd kick me out of the caucus in a heartbeat. (Long-time 1950s-era House Speaker) Sam Rayburn never would've put up with a sucker like me."

The Democratic response to all this was last week's unprecedented temper tantrum, in which they slowed down House business all night and had all their members refuse to show up for the regularly scheduled meeting of the Appropriations Committee.

It is further interesting to note that all this disarray is occurring before House and Senate hearings into the tangled mess known as the Whitewater affair begin in a few weeks. The use of the word "Whitewater" has come to mean far more than the failed real estate investment implicating the Clintons and other politically connected investors. It really pertains to a study into the political culture of Arkansas, for more than a century a one-party fiefdom characterized by a strange kind of insider wheeling and dealing.

When, later this summer, those revelations cascade across America's headlines, look for the House Democratic caucus to resemble still more the Hobbesian "state of nature."

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.