Bush, and Reagan before him, assiduously avoided dealing with the deficit by blaming a spendthrift Congress. Even as they assailed tax-and-spend Democrats, they submitted budget after budget with huge deficits and contributed to the current economic malaise.

In the last three and a half years, Bush has vetoed more bills than any president before, and Congress has responded by blocking Bush initiatives from passage or even consideration.

We realize that the last Democratic president worked as poorly with Congress. But Clinton offers the hope that a president and Congress could work together to achieve common goals. Unlike Jimmy Carter, Clinton hasn't run against Congress, and many members have campaigned with him in their districts--unusual for the last few Democratic nominees.

In addition, Clinton wouldn't have Congress to blame for the deficit, and members of Congress wouldn't want to blame a Democratic president for it. We explained last month why the deficit shouldn't be attacked with intensity until after recovery is fully under way (and why it isn't as bad as Ross Perot would have it anyway). But once unemployment and wages improve, the next president should work for spending cuts and tax hikes to shrink the deficit, if only because it makes Americans nervous about needed government spending and needed consumer spending.

We have every reason to think Clinton will do this. First of all, as we said, he won't want to blame a Democratic Congress. More important, he will want to avoid the drag on the economy that the deficit has been over the last three years. President Bush, by fudging budget numbers and playing the blame game, ignored the debt and deficit begun by his predecessor. Now he is in deep trouble, unwilling to fight the deficit because such action would damage the economy even further and unable politically to wait for the recovery that will allow deficit-fighting. Clinton will learn the lesson.

Finally, Clinton's hope for the future draws on both the promise of his character and the vision of his policies. He will build coalitions around workable programs. He will combine his passion and speech-making with the competence Dukakis promised. He will be, in a phrase that the cynics have driven to oxymoronism, a good politician.

Perhaps five or six years ago--and certainly 20 years ago--The Crimson would not have endorsed Bill Clinton, citing his approval of the death penalty and refusal to endorse widespread redistribution, among other things, as the sources of his inadequacy.

The death penalty still bothers most of us. But if economic growth and the expansion of cultural freedoms made our predecessors more idealistic, economic stagnation and the divisive politics of Reaganism have made the current generation of college-age students less so.

We still worry about job loss, educational decay, a society in which over half of America's male middle schoolers believe it's okay to force sex on a woman they are dating. We still worry about the poor. We still worry about crumbling public schools. We still worry about racial division, urban blight and anti-gay attitudes.

And now we worry about paying the bills, too. We worry about finding jobs for ourselves and good public schools for our children. We worry about the long-term economic stability of the nation and its ability to finance the programs we want. We worry about crime and drugs. We worry about the development of a partially welfare-dependent society and the lack of personal responsibility on the part of many Americans.

In the end, it is Bill Clinton who seems to understand these worries best. We hope he doesn't fudge the truth, as he has sometimes in this campaign and as Bush has throughout his presidency. But, at base, we know we share Clinton's principles.

A President Clinton won't bring utopia. Four years from now, every day won't be sunny, every street won't be free of crime, every home won't be prosperous.

But our lives will be better. And electing William Jefferson Clinton is the way to ensure that.