Paradigm

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."

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.

WASHINGTON -- A White House policy guru named James Pinkerton has been pushing a set of domestic initiatives to empower the poor -- such as school vouchers, enterprise zones and low-cost home rehabilitation and ownership -- as opposed to the old welfare approach. He has labeled it "The New Paradigm," meaning a conservative blueprint for dealing with social needs in the 1990s. (In case you don't have your dictionary handy, "paradigm" is an egghead's word for model or pattern.)The label could just as well be assigned to the original effort by President Bush to establish what he has unfortunately called "a new world order" (apologies to Adolf Hitler)

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.