This show was taped the day after the Democratic National Convention wound up, and the questions, as Mr. Buckley frames them, are: "Did Walter Mondale overdo it? Is Jimmy Carter far gone in narcissism? Are Democratic delegates suffering from creeping economic illiteracy?" This spirited conversation, which treats of both the substance and the strategy, holds up well in retrospect. Mr. Kondracke: "I think that Carter got himself positioned in the political middle in this convention by being booed over the draft registration, by having Teddy Kennedy force down his throat an economic plank that he didn't agree with, and by having militance on the issue of ERA and abortion force things into the platform that he didn't want. He makes himself seem to be the responsible middle beset by the liberals on the left and the right wing represented by Reagan. So, I think he comes out of this convention in much better shape than he went in." ... Mr. Kaiser: "I think that Reagan has this disarming ability to make people feel that he is a

regular guy and a plausible guy, which is going to make it hard for the strategy that Michael well describes to take hold. My sense of it is that the election is going to be won by whichever of these characters succeeds in making the other one the issue, and at the moment I think Reagan's got the advantage. But it's his to lose."