Another theory: ““They’re still angry, but not spitting mad anymore,’’ says Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster. ““They’re just not very interested. They got sick of politics a year ago, during the budget battle, and tuned out.’’ He is probably right as well. This election may have the lowest voter turnout in American history. The Waning of Democracy will be the subject of countless, meaningless good government seminars in 1997. But I suspect the apathy and disgust would melt away if anyone were offering a compelling reason to come out and vote–and it may be that there isn’t one this year. There are problems in America, but no crisis.

Which leads to a third theory: people were never all that angry in the first place. ““A year ago, we saw all the other pollsters holding focus groups, looking for problems,’’ says Doug Schoen, who, with Mark Penn, has polled for the president. ““Our sense was that people were more satisfied than not.’’ And he’s right, too. Political technology has outstripped reality. Pollsters have overused ““focus groups,’’ in which civilians are carefully, demographically selected and wantonly encouraged to whine. Schoen claims he and Penn conducted not a single such session this past year. Smart. Still, a happy electorate is, essentially, what an incumbent hopes to find–and therefore what his polltakers go looking for. It should be no surprise that Penn and Schoen found what no one else was seeking.

But there’s another reason this race is rageless. It’s possible that people are less angry because politicians–specifically, Bill Clinton and the Democrats–have given them some of what they wanted. Not so much on the substantial stuff, of course. The ““radical middle’’ was concerned about really balancing the budget and about the special-interest money swamp and about the quality of gov- ernment services, from schools to the DMV. For a small subgroup–the Perot-Buchanan-Gephardt fringe–there was a pessimistic concern about nativist, isolationist, protectionist issues. But there was also, universally, a disgust with the screechiness and hyperbole of public life. Only the extremists believe that this is a moment of great ideological significance; most people in America agree on most things. Even on the matters where people do disagree–abortion and affirmative action, for example–there is a grudging acknowledgment of the complexities involved, a willingness to concede that the other side has a point. It turns out that Colin Powell was right: the radical middle was, and remains, a sensible center–an electorate hungry for politicians who speak reasonably, in plain English. Powell certainly seemed one, the only Republican who correctly gauged the public mood. It may well be that the election of 1996 ended the day he chose not to compete, Nov. 8, 1995.

In the ’80s, Michael Kinsley has noted, liberals looked ““for heretics, while conservatives looked for converts.’’ It’s been the opposite in the ’90s. Democrats have spent most of the decade trying to prove their moderation (Clinton’s first two years were an exception, for which Democrats were justly punished in 1994), while Republicans decided to pose as ““revolutionaries.’’ GOP presidential candidates spent the 1996 primary season working overtime to establish their ideological purity, desperately denying any smidgen of moderation. It’s been a disaster. If you want a good sense of what the public doesn’t want to hear, just listen to Newt Gingrich–not the positions he takes, many of which are entirely reasonable, but the way he takes them. He reeks of anger.

And then listen to Bill Clinton. He has worked overtime trying to establish his ideological impurity. He’s taken some less than honorable positions, like his demagogic opposition to GOP Medicare reductions, but he has offered them softly, as a moderate antidote to the extremism Republicans have worked so hard, and so stupidly, to profess. He’s had the luxury of no primary battle, of not having to pander to his party’s left wing. And the public mood has played to his natural strength: last week there was extraordinary film of Clinton listening intently as a young woman, tears streaming, harangued him about partial-birth abortions. Then, with an arm draped over her shoulder, he responded. I don’t know what the president said, but it wasn’t nearly as important as the listening that came before it. The scene ended with a grateful, spontaneous hug from the woman. If there’s a better metaphor for what has happened this year, I can’t think of it.