Illegitimacy

IT IS difficult to hear it above the din of the Clinton administration -- Whitewater, Joycelyn Elders endorsing homosexual adoption, the health-care fight -- but a truly significant sound is issuing from the liberal side of the family values debate: It is the sound of cement breaking.Thoughtful people in the Democratic Party are beginning to acknowledge that the breakdown of the family is the most serious social problem we face. The Atlantic magazine put the acknowledgment on its front cover last year in an article by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead titled "Dan Quayle Was Right."

When the worried talk is about schools, the answers ar always money and new programs. The politicians talk about the money, where it will come from and how it will be spread around. The educational experts talk about programs and how they will be implemented. Where would they be without programs to implement?When the worried talk is about crime, the answers are always stricter gun control laws and, of course, the implementation of a vast array of new drug programs.When the worried talk is about troubled families, the answers are new federal social service programs.

An irritating survey of public opinion has just come to hand.The press release begins: ''Not since 1980 have voters been this pessimistic about the country entering into a presidential election year.''The handout continues: ''With nearly three-quarters of Americans (73 percent) saying the country is headed off on the wrong track, the mood of the country is back to the depth of pessimism measured in October 1990 (19 percent right direction, 79 percent wrong track) . . . ''What about it? The survey comes from Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, Virginia.

Washington.--Americans like to know where they are and whither they are tending (to quote Lincoln). We measure things with regularity and ingenuity in the commercial arena. Each month, for example, the Census Bureau publishes the ''Index of Leading Economic Indicators,'' which presents 11 data series to give us a clue about what comes next.Alas, we do not do as well in the social realm -- just where we are hurting these days. There have been sporadic attempts to put together a ''Social Indicators'' compendium, but none has survived to regularity.

Hyperactive Bill Clinton is back at it again, taking on another seemingly intractable problem. This time it's welfare reform. The man never stops.Early reports suggest the usual Clinton program: long on ideas, short on details and shorter still on funding.But at least it sets an agenda that is moderate and relatively thoughtful. And it serves as a counterpoint to the usual wackiness from the intellectual right, which has its own plan for welfare.It's two words long: End it.Conservatives have made welfare an issue for what seems like forever, dating back long before Ronald Reagan's rantings about Cadillac-driving welfare queens.

SAN DIEGO -- Obviously, the most important African-American man in public office is a conservative -- Justice Clarence Thomas. Less obviously, but surely, the most important African-American woman in public office is a conservative.Meet Eloise Anderson, director of California's Department of Social Services, a $16 billion agency in this state where one-eighth of all Americans live, where one-third of all births are illegitimate and where until now 12 percent of the population accounted for 27 percent of the nation's spending on Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

WHILE it is now a big question mark whether the White House will get around to "ending welfare as we know it" in 1994, one thing is certain: The promise to do so is a confession by President Clinton that the War on Poverty is a failure.For this Mr. Clinton deserves some credit, not only because he has chosen to take on powerful pro-welfare interest groups, but because he is right. The tragedy of the U.S. welfare system is that its perverse disincentives to get and stay married have weakened families, promoted out-of-wedlock births and led to a host of social ills.

THE FEDERAL welfare system was a mistake from the beginning, and this month's overwhelming vote in Congress to abandon it is merely a recognition of something the rest of the country has known for a long time.When it takes decades to fix something that is so clearly broken, that's evidence of a more general problem.Bad federal policies are much more destructive than bad state policies. They affect far more people, they're harder to change and they deprive us of the opportunity to try out a variety of policy options before we bet the whole country on one solution.

Vice President Quayle spoke at a luncheon in San Francisco last week. His theme was the necessity to return to old moral values of right and wrong. His speech ran to 50 paragraphs. This was Paragraph 43:''It doesn't help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.' ''The American press reacted as predictably as the dogs of Dr. Pavlov.

WASHINGTON -- Hoping to discourage the formation of long-term welfare families, the Clinton administration's welfare-reform task force intends to recommend that teen-agers who qualify for aid be prohibited from receiving it unless they live with a parent or other responsible adult, sources said yesterday.The change is intended to eliminate what some analysts view as an incentive for unmarried young women to have children: the ability to establish their own households with the aid of welfare payments.