So Republicans, grumbling and jittery most of the summer, entered their convention on a mild, quasi-delusional wave of enthusiasm. The rest of us will be forgiven for yawning: the Dole tax cut stands, to all but hard-core taxophobes, as a transparent and rather pathetic bit of politics. He wants to cut $548 billion over six years? And balance the budget? Does anyone actually believe this? The trouble is, after all the deficit reduction of the past few years, there isn’t much non-incendiary matter left on the federal level to cut. Al Gore’s Reinventing Government brigades have found every stray bit of the (mostly mythic) ““administrative savings.’’ Oh sure, you can abolish the Departments of Commerce or Education – and gain a handful of billions (if the public actually allows Head Start or small-business loans to be disappeared). But to make up the gazillions Dole would need to achieve balance, even if supply-side voodoo does goose the economy a little, he’ll have to go after the big boppers of budget politics: entitlements for the elderly and corporate welfare. Anyone taking bets on the likelihood of that?

The great Republican wave, created by Ronald Reagan and surfed by the Gingrich freshmen, may finally be ebbing. It was a wondrous thing while it lasted, an intellectually coherent attack on a central government that had overstepped the bounds of reason. And it succeeded beyond the wildest Republican dreams: VICTORY was the headline in the conservative Weekly Standard when Bill Clinton agreed to sign the welfare-reform bill, a moment that may prove the apotheosis of Reaganism.

There is a historical analogy. The post-Watergate class of 1974, which included 75 seething Democratic freshmen, came to power with much of the same brashness and brio as the GOP freshmen of 1994: ““We really wanted to give the Washington establishment a wake-up call,’’ says Toby Moffett, a Nader’s Raider who went to the House from Connecticut. Their ““revolution’’ was the culmination of the antiwar, civil-rights and, especially, Naderite movements. But they arrived to find all the heavy lifting had been done. The big civil-rights bills had been passed; Vietnam was nearly over; Nixon had gone on a legislative spree designed to placate the most ardent regulatory fanatics, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA and other consumerist outfits. ““There wasn’t a lot left to do,’’ Moffett says. Except write regulations for the new agencies, and then hold the line – which they did, in Congress, for 20 years – against the Reaganite tide, which was building in response to their excesses (the business commu- nity led the reaction, quickly joined by cultural conservatives appalled by lifestyle liberalism).

Nearly 25 years later, Republicans find themselves in a similar bind. The limits of the Reagan revolution may have been reached with last year’s worthy but disastrous assault on Medicare. Newt’s troops can, quietly, go about unwriting some of the regulations the Naderites wrote – but are there any big battles left to be fought? ““Medicaid will obviously have to go the way of welfare reform, back to the states,’’ Gingrich offers. But Medicaid involves not only health service for the poor, but also nursing homes for the parents of baby boomers – who may be unwilling to risk any chance that Mom winds up incontinent on a gurney in the den. There probably will be an attempt to deal with the massive entitlement dilemmas (yes, including Social Security) in 1997, but it will be done immaculately, beyond the reach of politics: with a bipartisan commission appointed by either President Clinton or Dole. And that will leave which great mountains for the class of ‘94 to scale? Bob Dole, sad and sensible, seems the perfect candidate for so inertial a moment.

There is one significant difference between the classes of 1974 and 1994. The liberals of ‘74 faced a supple, vibrant intellectual counterassault: conservatives raised serious questions about 40 years of government expansion. There is, however, no analogous liberal movement now. The Democrats, soon to gather in Chicago, seem – if anything – even more intellectually timid than these tired Republicans. They will cling to Bill Clinton for dear life. They will fight the Dole tax cuts and make sure everyone remembers Medicare. There may be the appearance of fast, furious political combat, but don’t be fooled: nothing is really happening here.