THE AMERICAN ELECTION OF 1994, A SMASHING NATIONAL victory for the Republican Party, was both unusual and momentous. It produced a result of startling clarity, which is unusual in the American constitutional scheme, especially for a non-presidential election; and it promises enduring dominance for the Republicans, which is momentous. The change that President Bill Clinton said he would bring in 1992, and did not bring, has been imposed on him.

Not since 1946, when Harry Truman was presented with a Republican Congress, has an incumbent president been treated so roughly by the voters. But Truman lived in the era of New Deal dominance and was able to recover and be re-elected in 1948. The better analogy for the 1994 election, unfortunately for the Democrats, is probably 1930, when Herbert Hoover was repudiated by the voters and a new Democratic Congress become the prelude to the New Deal dominance that began in 1932 and now seems to have come to an end.