What would happen in the elections three weeks hence? Both teams had seen their leaders wounded--Newt Gingrich by the 1995 "government shutdown" (a political disaster, though nothing much happened to the government itself) and then by allegations

of personal financial misdoings; Bill Clinton by Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones and all the rest. Each team had a trend in its favor--for the Democrats, the fact that the Republicans had already, in 1996, fallen back from their stunning victory in 1994; for the Republicans, the fact that the party in control of the White House normally suffers in the off-year election. Mr. Fund is a conservative Republican, Mr. Green a liberal Democrat, and Mr. Buckley starts by requesting "that they attempt to give opinions as objective as they can manage, even if to do so gives aid and comfort to the enemy." Mr. Green starts by conceding that "When Bill Clinton first got elected, the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, the House, the governors' mansions, and the Democrats have lost all three," and we're off on a pungent exchange ranging from the tobacco companies to school vouchers to what Mr. Fund describes as "the memo written by Hillary Rodham, who I think laid out the constitutional basis for impeachment." (It was written in 1974, about another President--but... )