COLUMN ONE : Common Sense Over Charisma : Forget the flamboyant populists of old. Across Latin America, today’s presidents are winning the vote with tough austerity plans. Voters embrace pain for gain--long-desired stability.

BUENOS AIRES —  Election day, time to vote. El Presidente has raised taxes, slashed popular subsidies, let unemployment soar to record rates. Adios and out he goes? Not in the new Latin America.

After inflicting just that kind of painful austerity, Presidents Carlos Menem of Argentina and Alberto Fujimori of Peru wangled constitutional amendments allowing them to run for reelection and then won by landslides.

Along with the pain, of course, Menem and Fujimori gave voters something they apparently craved: economic and political stability.

As democracy matures across Latin America, the region’s latest crop of leaders reflects an increasingly sober and practical approach to politics. Voters have learned what stability costs, and they are willing to pay the price. Politicians have learned that rhetoric, paternalism and populism are no substitute for competence and results.

Gone is the heady excitement sparked by many Latin American leaders of the past. Rationality reigns.

“The enthusiasm and magic aren’t there . . . that colored earlier leaders,” said Rosendo Fraga, an Argentine political analyst. “This was very clear to whoever was here for the elections of May 14. Menem won 50% of the votes, but there was no great popular fervor. It was a rational vote.”

Today’s Latin American presidents vary as widely in their styles and backgrounds as the geographies they govern, from the cactus fields of the Sonora Desert to the icy forests of Tierra del Fuego. But with few exceptions, they are part of a regional trend toward pragmatic leadership.

Old-style caudillos --strongmen--depended heavily on macho personality, florid oratory or costly patronage to win mass support. One famous master at this was Gen. Juan D. Peron, who captivated Argentina’s working masses with grand speeches, pro-labor policies and generous spending.

During two presidential terms, from 1946 to 1955, Peron created jobs, raised wages and subsidized social programs on a huge scale. Economists now agree that such lavish ways helped set the stage for later super-inflation and an economic debacle not only in Argentina but also in many other Latin American countries.

Because economic and political instability often go together, many an old-style administration got into terminal trouble of both kinds. And like Peron, many a caudillo lost his job by military coup.

Today’s “ caudillos of stability,” as Fraga calls them, put far greater stock in realistic economic programs and prudent management. “The predominant option today is a kind of popular conservatism, which is what Menem and Fujimori represent,” Fraga said in an interview.

Partly, they are riding the neo-liberal wave that is sweeping most of the world, following the example of Asia’s rapidly developing tigers and sticking to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. But Latin Americans and their leaders have learned valuable lessons from hard experience.

They’re fed up with guerrilla war, terrorism and harsh military rule. They’ve had it with leftist economic experiments and irresponsible public spending that fuels inflation and fiscal crises. Those things, they’ve found, can end up hurting more than government austerity.

In countries such as Argentina, where monthly inflation once raged in triple digits, voters are especially keen on leaders--no matter how uncharismatic--who know how to keep prices in line.

“Inflation has made a major change in Latin American political culture,” Fraga said. “I think the key to this is the suffering of people . . . from inflation. This, to a large extent, is what has produced political, social and economic maturation.”

The political culture is now marked by widespread awareness that economic and political stability reinforce each other and that, in fact, it is not possible to have one without the other.

Citizens and leaders alike are gaining skill in the orderly give-and-take of democracy. As people learn to participate, leaders are forced to keep them in mind. Peter Cleaves, director of the Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of Texas, said political power has become more broadly distributed: New parties, more powerful interest groups and more aggressive news media help electorates keep politicians on their toes.

“Citizens are more skeptical about leaving decisions up to a jefe supremo [supreme leader],” Cleaves said. “They’re a lot more critical and evaluative of leadership than they have been in the past.”

Big Hats and Brass Buttons

The end of the Cold War has also contributed to the rise of the “ caudillos of stability.” Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic failure of communism in Cuba, leftist politicians have little clout in Latin America and rightists no longer have a formidable foe. As a result, leadership based on ideology, and disruptive left-right strife, has faded from the scene.

And because of the Cold War’s end, the military option has waned as well. Fears of Communist subversion no longer serve as justification for a takeover by the military. Almost everyone agrees now that elections are the best way to change government and ensure stability. Powerful elites and common people are less willing than ever to call in the men with big hats and brass buttons.

During most of this century, Latin America was a kaleidoscope of dictatorial and democratic governments with civilian and military leaders of varying ideological colors. Military strongmen often seized power to straighten out political and economic messes created under populist civilian leadership.

The majority of the region’s population was under military rule during much of the 1960s and 1970s. But during the 1980s, civilian government returned to one nation after another. Now, elected leaders govern every country except Cuba.

In elections over the past 18 months, voters in seven countries that account for more than three-quarters of the region’s 450 million people chose presidents to lead until 1999 or 2000. In each of those countries, the winner is at least the second straight civilian president to be elected.

Seven Political Insiders

All seven are political insiders, associated with incumbent or previous administrations. All are closely identified with economic stability, and none could be called a classical populist.

Chilean President Eduardo Frei, elected in December, 1993, is a somber, soft-spoken engineer who has little of the crowd appeal that made his father a popular president in the 1970s. But the younger Frei was the candidate of the incumbent coalition that took power in 1990 after 16 years of repressive military rule and kept the country on a successful economic course.

Frei’s Christian Democrats are united with socialists and other leftists behind a pragmatic program of free-market policies. Few Chileans now would think of voting for a populist leader like Salvador Allende, whose socialist administration ended in chaos and a coup in 1973.

Ernesto Samper won Colombian elections in May, 1994, mostly because he was a faithful member of the dominant Liberal Party. Samper, an economist and former government minister, stood for continuing free-market reforms, but at a more cautious pace.

Mexico’s Ernesto Zedillo, who won the presidency in August, 1994, also is a technocrat, with a doctorate in economics from Yale. His personality might best be described as neutral, but that was just fine when he was picked by the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to replace assassinated candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.

Although Mexicans voted for continuity and stability, they were slapped with a peso devaluation and a deep financial crisis soon after Zedillo took office Dec. 1. In working to bring back the economy, he is sticking to a pragmatic, hard-slogging approach.

Brazil’s Fernando Henrique Cardoso won the presidency in October, 1994, largely on the strength of an economic stabilization plan that he had launched as finance minister. Cardoso, a former sociology professor, has a calm and reasoned style of discourse that sometimes is called blase.

Voters rejected populist labor leader Luis Inacio (Lula) da Silva, a populist outsider with a leftist platform. Earlier in his career, Cardoso was a leftist. His shift to free-market pragmatism reflects the prevailing political mood in Brazil--despite its bad experience with former President Fernando Collor de Mello, a free-marketeer who was impeached on corruption charges in 1992.

In Uruguay, former President Julio Sanguinetti defeated the party in power when he won election in November, 1994. His policies are chiefly aimed at economic and social stability, which were trademarks of his previous presidency.

Although Sanguinetti has promised to address the social costs of free-market policies, he has been careful not to question the need for government austerity and business expansion. Uruguayans are still fond of their country’s traditional welfare programs. But economic crises and hardships have taught them to appreciate spending restraints and private-sector growth.

Peru’s Fujimori won reelection in April, followed by Menem in Argentina. Both had rescued their countries from economic debacles of hyper-inflation and disinvestment. In both countries, market policies and anti-inflation austerity brought increased unemployment, but most voters seemed willing to pay those costs.

Fujimori’s first term not only achieved economic stability but the near-defeat of the once-fearsome Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorist and guerrilla movement. Fujimori has shown populist tendencies, touring the countryside to hand over tractors and schoolhouses, but his popularity is not based chiefly on that, analysts say.

Not Popular, But They Get Results

“People didn’t vote for him because they like him, they voted for him because he has produced results,” said Peruvian political analyst Enrique Obando. It is telling that one of Fujimori’s most popular acts was to close Congress in 1992, breaking up what was widely perceived as a nest of traditional populists and demagogues.

Menem, a former provincial governor, won his first presidential election in 1989 as the candidate of a party founded by Peron. In those days, Menem had the reputation of a populist pol in the old Peronist style. But changing with the times, he has toned down his flamboyant style and stuck to a program of hard-nosed, free-market reforms.

A few days before the May elections in Argentina, opposition candidate Jose Octavio Bordon promised to increase retirement pensions. Menem said no, there wasn’t enough money. People voted for Menem at a moment when the Argentine economy was shaken by regional shock waves from Mexico’s crisis.

The longer the current trend of democracy lasts, the more the political winds shift in democratic directions. Just a couple of decades ago, much of the region was dominated by traditional business and political elites. Democratic traditions and institutions were weak, and there were relatively few strong interest groups.

“Now you’ve got a much richer political tapestry, one that calls for a different kind of leadership,” said Paul H. Boeker, who heads the San Diego-based Institute of the Americas. There are exceptions, Boeker said, in countries such as Guatemala and Nicaragua, where politics remains relatively primitive. But he said that in most of Latin America, leaders are learning to make government work through negotiated compromises between conflicting demands from different quarters.

“I think you have more and more Latin American politicians looking more like U.S. or European politicians,” Boeker said.

“It’s pragmatism, but . . . there is a certain steadiness of vision too,” he said. “Their pragmatism takes place within a set of strategic goals.”

One exception, Boeker said, is Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera, a “decent man” and simpatico politician who has been trying to solve Venezuela’s staggering economic problems with price controls, exchange controls and other measures that have failed in the past. “He’s winging it, and winging it on the basis of instincts from the past,” Boeker said. “I don’t see a strategic vision.”

According to a recent Gallup poll, Caldera’s public disapproval rating has risen to 52%--one more sign that today’s Latin Americans don’t support politicians just for being congenial. But Eduardo Gamarra, acting director of the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, argued that the traditional hunger for strong, personalist leaders is not dead.

Leaders Could Use Some Charisma

“We do need those old-style caudillos dressed in modern garb,” Gamarra said. For example, he said, Zedillo could use some charisma to lead Mexicans through their problems. And Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada could use some to push through his ambitious program of economic and political reforms, which are meeting widespread resistance.

In Bolivia and many Latin American countries, economic reforms have brought job losses, an end to government subsidies and stagnant wages. The painful squeeze has evoked groans that prevailing neo-liberal policies benefit business oligarchies at the expense of poor masses. Many leaders are acknowledging such complaints and giving at least lip service to “social programs” they say will ease the pain of reform and reduce poverty.

Argentine analyst Fraga predicted that the pressure will increase on leaders with more social-democratic tendencies: “If stability is consolidated and there is a growth phenomenon, there will be more social demands.”