Political pessimism is in fashion. Mr. Phillips, who gained fame in the 1960s for discerning and applauding the growing power of the Sun Belt, conservatism, and the Republican Party, here surveys the Reaganite present and future with dismay. He sees the Reagan coalition as nostalgic, volatile and incapable of dealing constructively with "an ebbing global economic competitiveness, a declining civitas, a Balkanizing society, a century-old party system and archaic national decision-making mechanisms." Although not predicting a totalitarian outcome (the Weimar analogy), he wouldn't be surprised should such occur.