WASHINGTON -- Never in modern American history has Washington seen a repudiation quite like this.

Repudiated were four decades of Democratic rule in the House, a sitting president who himself had won office as an apostle of change, a political and social philosophy that has dominated American life and its national legislature for nearly two-thirds of a century, and scores of individual lawmakers who only a year or two ago thought they had lifetime tenure on Capitol Hill.

Not a single Republican incumbent governor or member of Congress was defeated Tuesday.

The American people spoke without ambiguity, venting their rage, frustration, impatience and fears. They were so angry that they would, as was said of tempestuous baseball great Ty Cobb, climb a mountain to punch an echo. They took their fury out on the Democrats and, in the process, ended an era and altered the political landscape of country and capital.

But in the fine print of Tuesday's election results is more than the powerful shout of ''No!'' In the choices they made in the quiet of the nation's polling places, Americans provided hints of an emerging new consensus in the country about government and political philosophy.

The voters sent many of the biggest names in American politics into retirement -- including Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York and former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, both symbols of New Deal liberalism -- but they also returned, with strong mandates, a series of Republican governors. These leaders, working far from Washington, have forged new policy trails on issues such as education and welfare and have pressed the low-tax agenda through skeptical legislatures.

Four of the governors -- Jim Edgar of Illinois, John Engler of Michigan, Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and George Voinovich of Ohio -- are unflamboyant Midwesterners who won reelection by the kind of astonishing mandates that Democratic House members used to win routinely. Meanwhile, reelection victories of two governors on opposite coasts, Pete Wilson of California and William Weld of Massachusetts, may help shape the struggle for the Republican presidential nomination.

Rebellions in American political life almost always start at the local level, and that is why the road traveled by the Republican governors may suggest the direction of national politics. In fact, the few Republicans rejected in high-profile races -- especially Oliver North in Virginia and apparently Rep. Michael Huffington in California -- did not fit the mold.

At both the congressional and gubernatorial levels, the voice of the voters suggests far more than a rightward turn in the nation's politics. The election emphasized the need, as President Clinton gamely put it in his press conference yesterday afternoon, to ''change the way our country does business and make our government work again.''

But it also underlined deep distrust of the Democrats and profound doubts about their capacity to be entrusted with the responsibility to govern.

The failure of the anti-incumbent sentiment to touch even one Republican gave some credence to the belief of GOP Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, a likely presidential candidate who said yesterday that the political sentiment was ''anti-Democrat, not anti-Washington.''

In fact, interviews with voters at polling places across the country showed that nearly three voters out of five believe the country is ''off on the wrong track.'' These voters, according to Mitofsky International, a New York polling firm, voted 2-to-1 for Republicans.

This week's vote, moreover, suggests that the nation's voters have grave doubts about 40 years of Democratic social engineering.

Americans do not entirely believe that all the Democrats' notions and all government programs are nefarious, of course. More than 33 million Americans are Medicare recipients, for example, and the Social Security program reaches into nearly every family in the country. But Americans do believe that after four decades of Democratic spending initiatives and social programs, the streets are not safe, the schools are in crisis, taxes are too high and public confidence in the future is at all-time lows.

That is why Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, elected a Democrat, could stand before a battery of microphones yesterday morning, pronounce himself a Republican, embrace what he called ''the philosophy of our forebears'' and describe the GOP ''a party of hope of America, not a party of dependency.''

Indeed, the winds of change that blew through the country in recent weeks whipped around Washington yesterday. Men who were accustomed to being called ''Mr. Chairman'' were out of work. Staff aides, committee lawyers, press spokesmen, secretaries and clerks were uneasy of their futures. The rules of lobbying, protocol and procedure were uncertain.

A whole way of life that had developed in the Democrats' four decades of dominance in the House -- a set of assumptions about power and comportment -- suddenly was rendered irrelevant. Never before had one party ruled the House for so long, and, in an instant, the whole architecture of life in Washington was in a shambles.

''Let new blood in,'' said Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who is poised to be the new House speaker.

There will be more new blood than even he expected only days ago, and almost certainly many battles ahead.

The House that Gingrich is building will seek to change the country but, first of all, will seek to change the way Congress works, especially in the application of federal laws to Congress itself. ''These reforms will be done immediately,'' said Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee.

But amid the heady expressions of victory there were some sober words about the burden of controlling Congress, and the pressure the voters will bring to bear on the Republicans to address the concerns that Americans brought with them to polling places Tuesday.

''If we don't do some of these things,'' said Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, in line to become majority leader, ''they're going to cancel our lease.''