CHICAGO -
There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man named Al Gore over there. Telling me I got to beware - of some ''two-headed monster of ignorance and audacity called Dole-Gingrich.''
The vice president who has the personality of a two-by-four was rocking and rolling, doing his best Ann Richards ''pooooor George'' impressions to whack the Republicans with stick-in-the-eye insults such as ''the ginsu gang who tried to chop the environment.'' It made the Democrats ecstatic. They even smiled.
One of the first things I noticed here is that compared to the Republican Party in San Diego, Democrats don't smile as much. They mostly walk around looking like someone just lit up a cheap stogie right next to their non-smoking table.
They should be happy, coasting on a cloud of designer euphoria. President Clinton has emerged from a food-fight of scandals, screwups and public distrust without even a spot on his tie. If there's green kryptonite for Super Clinton, nobody has found it yet. Polls show 60 percent of Americans believe he is lying one day, and the next day he leads Bob Dole by 10 points or more.
In San Diego, Republicans sweated out Mr. Dole's Big Speech with more anxiety than parents at a piano recital. But still, they kept smiling the whole week through.
Democrats can hardly wait for Bill Clinton to show off his smooth game-show, star speaker style - but it's the joyless, grim-faced anticipation of payback time on a heavy grudge.
To hear some reports, Republicans have cornered the market on ''mean-spirited.'' Not quite. Anyone who buys that hasn't seen the Dole-man get Gored by the dean of mean, the original Bruise Brother, Attack-Dog Al.
And Democrats love it. Nothing makes them happier than being really angry.
I think I figured out why at the hippie reunion they held on Sunday for half of the Chicago Eight from '68: Tom Hayden, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis and Bobby Seale.
The show began with two giant peace symbols projected on each side of a darkened stage. Then the curtain went up on a ''be-in happening'' of hippies singing ''The Age of Aquarius'' from Hair, and for just a few seconds, it was like traveling back in time to those summers of peace and love and protest in the late '60s.
Then I woke up. It hit me that the Age of Aquarius is now 40-something. Those flower children in torn bellbottom jeans, tie-dyed headbands and beads really were children - not even born yet in 1968. No dry textbook will ever capture the spirit of those electrifying, magical, frightening years when it seemed as if the planets really were aligned to tear us all apart with assassinations, riots, demonstrations, war and bombings. But those kids acting the role of hippies proved: We are history.
And so is the issue that ripped the Democratic Party apart, then welded it back together - Vietnam.
Graham Nash and Stephen Stills sang the songs again, with Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne. The speakers talked about the ''genocide of our environment.'' They railed at ''the dark days of dimwitted Republicans.'' The crowd hissed and jeered on cue whenever Newt Gingrich or Pat Buchanan were named. They said the sky is not only falling, ''some of it is down around our ankles.'' And they repeated the old mantras about ''power to the people.''
But the spark was not there.
I saw the same thing happen in San Diego when the crowd cranked and cranked like a car with a timing problem, but never roared to life to celebrate Bob Dole. Here it was the same thing - speakers demanded a cause ''to galvanize us in anger'' - but it never caught on. And Newt Gingrich - doofus that he often is - is no Great Satan stand-in for Mayor Daley of 1968 or Richard Nixon of 1972.
So Democrats are desperate for one big cause to get really mad about. Their high-octane fuel is anger, and they are running out of gas.
Sure, this is still the party for people with a grievance. But the people who think Toyotas cause eco-genocide don't speak the same language as the teachers union members who think school vouchers will destroy civilization. Sara Brady and Christopher Reeve told dramatic made-for-TV stories, but they might as well be on different channels.
Here's a modest suggestion from a former angry Democrat: Try getting mad about the way the party has sold its soul to unions and dumpy trial lawyers in $3,000 suits who drape themselves in trophy wives like gaudy jewelry.
Get mad about a party that wants to declare prohibition against ''nicotine delivery devices,'' while guzzling free Miller Lite donated by The Philip Morris Family of Companies.
Get mad about the hypocrites who scorn Republicans for their lack of diversity, while Democrats choose their delegates according to rigid decimal-point quotas for women and minorities.
Get really torqued about a plastic president who brags about leading welfare reform, then turns the other face and hints that he will repeal it if he is re-elected.
Find another ugly war to protest; try Chechnya, or U.S. troops in Bosnia.
Republicans wear their optimistic smiles the same way they wear all those stars and stripes, without apology. Democrats carry anger like a protest sign because they crusade to fix the things that are wrong with our country that Republicans can't or won't notice. That's the beauty of the two-party plan. Republicans see America's glass half full of champagne, and Democrats see the empty half and want to know who drank their share.
When all those former flower-power hippies were urged to get out and support Bill Clinton, the applause was polite, but anemic. Maybe that's because the people who met National Guard boyonets with flower power and marched for civil rights need a better cause than a ''two-headed monster'' to sell out for an empty suit.
Peter Bronson is Enquirer editorial page editor and one of the Enquirer's team covering the Democratic National Convention this week in Chicago.
