The fundamental problems of politics, in the modern world as in the ancient one, have been and inevitably will be moral. To the ancients the maxim that no state could long flourish without virtue was clear. Equally clear was the conclusion that no state had ever conducted itself virtuously over a long span of years. We are all familiar with the philosophical and the practical debate over this problem, one that has perplexed statesmen and philosophers from the beginnings of history. We need only think of the New Testament account of Herod's massacre of the Innocents—an issue that conjured up, or seemed to conjure up, Reasons of State.

The Democratic party is like an estranged married couple that tries to make a go of it again. However great its resolve to play up the things held in common and to minimize those causing strife, it soon finds that the matters that tear at the relationship are of equal or greater importance than those that cement it. One might say that on many issues the Democratic party is divided between those who squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle and those who roll it up from the end.

For openers, there are elements in the party who are distinctly uncomfortable with many of the constituencies that traditionally have lent it support. For another thing, the party itself is divided between vintage free-traders and born-again protectionists. Although Democrats want government to have more than the limited role Ronald Reagan would consign to it, many in the party fear that the voters are unsympathetic to its statist proclivities.

Last October, seven years after the death of General Franco and five years after the re-establishment of parliamentary democracy, Spaniards elected a Socialist government. Felipe Gonzalez, at forty, became the youngest prime minister in Europe. The Socialist landslide victory brought them an absolute majority in the Cortes, the Spanish legislature, and responsibility for solving Spain's grave economic troubles.

A nine-month balance sheet on the Socialist government reveals a cautious, reformist approach at home combined with some far-ranging diplomatic probes abroad. Longterm prospects for success in either arena are not particularly good, but the past year has shown that the effort will be worth watching.