AND I QUOTE / What Political Books Are Saying : THE SYSTEM: The American Way of Politics Stretched to the Breaking Point,<i> By Haynes Johnson & David S. Broder (Little, Brown: $25.95; 560 pp.)</i>

“By that summer [of 1994], the first lady thought she was prepared for anything. Every day for months, she had been demonized on right-wing talk radio shows, in print and in national advertising campaigns. But nothing equaled what she experienced on the West Coast in late July, where she went to launch buses carrying volunteers to Washington to pressure Congress [for health care reform]. It was the hatred on the faces in the crowds that so disturbed her. . . .

“Founders of The System . . . made it difficult for major changes to occur. But they surely did not foresee the self-destructiveness and distrust that now hobble American government and politics.”

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American journalism once held a promise, which has faded to only a hope: that by writing about something, exposing the rot to sunlight, things would be made better. In this tradition, two of America’s most esteemed political journalists try to raise the house lights on the film noir of Washington’s gridlock and voter backlash of 1993-’94. Not so long ago this book with its riches of insider detail would have been called an expose. Today, it stands more as a plea for decency in democracy.

IN THE END, THOUGH: Clinton’s health care reform was the wrong medicine for universal cynicism.