Paradigm

PRESIDENTS LIKE to describe their initiatives as "new." The most famous example of this is Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal."Theodore Roosevelt had his "New Nationalism." Woodrow Wilson had his "New Freedom." John F. Kennedy had the "New Frontier." Richard Nixon's motto was "The New Malfeasance." No! Just kidding! It was "New Federalism."Advertising copy writers say "new" is always a good modifier, even for something that isn't, but that "new and improved" is better. That's okay for products, but I don't think it would work for political ideas.

Dr. Pietr Hitzig adjusts his headphones as he readies for a radio interview. It's been one day since major drug companies pulled their diet pills off the market, citing patients who (x experienced heart damage, and Hitzig's Timonium office is on full alert.On his desk is the Food and Drug Administration press release warning of the dangers associated with "fen-phen," the popular diet-pill combination he was instrumental in popularizing. On the phone is a national radio audience eager for his view on what to do next.

TAKE COVER! THE paradigms are shifting again. Last year it was the $500 Internet computer, which was supposed to transmogrify the computing universe. Heralded as a bolt of inspiration from the computer gods on Mount Silicon, the $500 networked PC is likely to arrive not because of some profound paradigm shift, but rather simply because computers are getting cheaper all the time.Now comes the Microsoft Corp., trumpeting another paradigm shift. Microsoft says the software that people have used for the last 20 years is old-fashioned and will have to have its paradigms replaced later this fall.

THE MODERATES say that the radicals live by "rejection." The radicals call the moderates a bunch of "undertakers." The party's founder contends that the party "committed suicide" in the recent election: "The voters never learned about the good things we were doing because all the media tuned into was the fight."This particular battle is going on in the German Green Party, which lost half of its votes and all of its seats in the Dec. 2 parliamentary elections. The Greens are now experiencing open warfare between the moderate "realos" and the radical "fundis."

Cleveland. -- The other night at the dinner table, my three kids -- ages 9, 6 and 4 -- took time out from their food fight to teach me about paradigm shifts, the limitations of linear thinking and the how to refocus parameters.Here's how it happened: We were playing our own oral version of the Sesame Street game ''What Doesn't Belong?'' where kids look at three pictures and choose the one that doesn't fit. I said, ''OK, what doesn't belong, an orange, a tomato or a strawberry?''The oldest didn't take more than a second to deliver his smug answer: ''Tomato because the other two are fruits'' I agreed that this was the right answer despite the fact that some purists insist a tomato is a fruit.

GEORGE BUSH says he's learned his lesson. No more new taxes, and this time he really means it. In fact, he seriously regrets . . . ''being forced'' by big-spending Democrats to raise taxes the last time. Of course ''no new taxes'' was always, as the Wall Street Journal put it, ''the Big Lie of the great budget debate.''Mr. Bush's choices were a fiscal calamity, a tax increase, or spending cuts too unpopular to propose. Through months of demagoguery, he never did propose spending cuts anywhere near equal to the tax increase he supposedly wanted to avoid.

WASHINGTON -- Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's march to Washington this week to protest Baltimore's financial plight will land him on the doorstep of an administration that rules out a major new federal bail-out for cities.President Bush has continued the federal retreat from the cities Ronald Reagan began in the 1980s. In the decade of their leadership, aid to the cities has been halved while overall federal spending authority has more than doubled, according to the National League of Cities.Behind the policy is a little-known political philosophy: the New Paradigm.

Boston. -- So Bill Clinton thinks he can treat the African-American vote as a marginal afterthought?Fine. In November, I may treat him as an irrelevant non-thought. I will vote for local and state offices. I may not vote for Mr. Clinton.The Democrats say they will spend $3 million to register African-American and Latino voters. Jesse Jackson has been given a bus to find them. Mr. Clinton, who iced Mr. Jackson for two months to woo white voters, might soon appear with the reverend.Whoopdeedoo.

Michael K. Hooker marched into town in 1986 predicting he'd do grand things as president of the University of MarylandBaltimore County.Now, as he leaves for another grand undertaking as head of the University of Massachusetts system, he has a one-word assessment of how he did in Catonsville."

Milwaukee -- The nation's 15th-largest urban school system will open this fall without Howard Fuller -- the superintendent who was fast making Milwaukee a national experiment in reinventing schools for the benefit of the children they enroll instead of the people who work there.The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association ran a slate of anti-Fuller candidates in springtime school-board elections. In a light turnout, four of five triumphed. Mr. Fuller then announced he would resign rather than face ''death by a thousand cuts.