BOOKS: IT'S VALUES, STUPID!

IN AN ELECTION YEAR, BEWARE THE pundit or politician tossing about the word "values." Remember to ask the key question, "Whose values?" In the case of Ben J. Wattenberg, whose new book, Values Matter Most (Free Press; 426 pages; $25), has already managed to grab a few headlines, that question is as tangled as ever.

Wattenberg, 62, a columnist and think tanker for the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, makes much of his Democratic credentials: if he refers to his years as a speechwriter for Lyndon B. Johnson once, he does so a dozen times. He lays out his lifetime voting record, which reveals he is that mottled beast, a Reagan Democrat. He voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. And so he presents his book essentially as an open letter to Clinton, describing how the President has strayed from the centrist positions that got him elected and suggesting ways in which he--or whoever captures the "values" debate--can win the presidency in '96. It is not the economy, stupid, Wattenberg says; what voters really care about is social issues, especially welfare, crime, education and affirmative action.

Although debatable, this is not a revolutionary argument. But Wattenberg has already provoked the sort of response book publishers dream of: when Clinton picked up Values Matter Most recently, he found himself moved to call the author. Their long chat prompted Wattenberg to dash off a newspaper column in which he quoted the President as acknowledging that he had "changed philosophically" during the past few years: a statement the White House now vehemently denies.

Wattenberg is at his most impressive when dealing with the specifics of the disjunction between what Clinton promised and how he has governed. These rare sharp moments, however, are surrounded by more stuffing than last week's Thanksgiving turkey. Wattenberg fills 400 windy and repetitive pages with folksy statements ("Is there hope for American kids? You bet there is") and self-important quotations from his own previous work. His favorite word? Psephology (look it up). The book was also clearly rushed into print, riddled with typographical and factual errors that make the reader wonder what else the author may have got wrong. He says, for example, that Richard Allen Davis was convicted for the murder of Polly Klaas, when in fact a venue for his trial has not yet been chosen.

Even more irritating is Wattenberg's sloppy thinking. The author claims, for instance, that while quotas trouble many Americans, the average voter is not all that concerned with race. His basis for this? Discussions in two focus groups in which 1 of 19 participants was black. And his readiness to gloss over some of the Republicans' rhetorical excesses is troubling. The 1988 Bush campaign's Willie Horton attack ads, for instance, raised a valid issue, he says, and were not racist. Writes Wattenberg: "If he had been white and looked like a thug--which Horton did--his photograph would [still] have been used."