CHICAGO -
''My fellow Americans, it's great to finally be back among my dear friends from the great state of (fill in the blank). My great-great grandfather worked 11 days a week, cleaning latrines in a sweat shop in the poorest neighborhood of the most poverty-stricken city in America, and yet today, I stand before you a congressman, earning a fortune to brag about my humble origins.
''Now we are at a crossroads - it's time to choose: Do you want me to deliver all the toppings AND extra cheese? Or do you want food poisoning from the radical extremists I'm running against? I offer equality. Opportunity. Freedom. Values. They will starve children, turn our planet into a smoking cinder and take my parking space at the Capitol. I have a vision. All they offer is negative attacks. On to victory!''
After two political conventions and enough speeches to make the sign-language lady's arms fall off, it finally hit me like a swinging TV camera: They are all interchangeable. Republicans and Democrats use the same recipe to cook up speeches like Chicago-style stuffed pizzas that all claim to be ''Voted Best in America.'' They just move around the toppings: education, abortion, crime, taxes, jobs, welfare. Then they sprinkle on lots of cheesy adjectives: brighter, healthier, better, more efficient, fairer.
It doesn't really matter how they are mixed together, because people don't really hear convention speeches. They just listen for keywords that make delegates bark and slobber like dogs when the doorbell rings.
So, in Chicago you could say, ''I want a brighter future where every child in every American school joins a union to demand a higher wage for doing homework assigned by teachers'' - and Democrats would still go wild and cheer on cue at ''union'' and ''teacher'' and ''higher wage.''
In San Diego you could say, ''Let's fight for our constitutional rights to use assault weapons to restore school prayer'' - and half the Republicans would applaud ''school prayer'' while the other half would go off at ''constitutional rights'' and ''weapons' in the same sentence.
If you don't believe it, consider the delirious reaction to Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night when she called for a federal mandate to give workers time off for just about anything, even to take a pet to the vet. No kidding. All she had to say was ''expand'' and ''time off'' and this convention of public employee unions went crazy.
She described herself and her husband as the most caring parents since Ozzie and Harriet - but then said that, ''We have learned that to raise a happy, healthy and hopeful child, it takes a family, it takes teachers, it takes clergy, it takes business people, it takes community leaders . . . it takes all of us.''
The crowd went nuts, but I was thinking: If it takes that many babysitters, Chelsea must take after Uncle Roger.
''Yes, it takes a village,'' she said. ''And it takes a president.''
The Democrats screamed like lunatics, but I just didn't get it. Sure, it would be handy to be Commander in Chief to issue executive orders on mowing the lawn. But most parents get by without calling out the National Guard. And we don't need more help from a ''village'' the size of the federal government.
I don't understand it, but that's my own fault. I was listening.
I heard Mrs. Clinton rewrite President Kennedy's famous speech into: ''Ask not what you can do for your village; ask what your village can do for you.''
I heard Jesse Jackson intoxicate the crowd with 100-proof Old Spender, at a convention that is nominating a ''new Democrat'' who is supposed to be a member of spendaholics anonymous. Sure enough, President Clinton fell off the wagon the next day and tried to buy votes with $8.5 billion in new government programs.
I heard Mario Cuomo and Dick Gephardt describe comic-book pictures of evil, heartless, cruel Republicans who threaten women, children, education and the environment and - for shame, for shame - who dare to criticize the Clintons' chronic truth trouble.
I heard Christopher Reeve say - what? That he is more disabled than Bob Dole? Was it some kind of sympathy bidding war? Whatever it was about, everyone agreed it was very touching and that Superman is still invulnerable, at least to criticism, which is a good thing because anyone else making speeches like his or Sarah Brady's might be accused of hiding the liberal agenda under a cloak of mawkish appeals to maudlin emotion. Like Al Gore.
But nobody said that. In fact, despite all the talk, they didn't say a lot.
Neither party said anything about lobbyists, for example, although you couldn't spill a free drink at either convention without splashing one. Republicans did not talk about their Contract With America to tackle $5 trillion in debt by saving pocket change on school lunches.
And among Democrats, never was heard a discouraging word about Filegate, Travelgate, the president's sexual harassment suit or his friends in the slammer.
In San Diego, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and even Newt Gingrich were almost invisible.
In Chicago, Mike Dukakis and George McGovern sat in the shadowed rafters, alone, while Jimmy Carter sat in a rocking chair on Ted and Jane Fonda's ranch and the former King of Chicago, Dan Rostenkowski, sat in jail.
As both parties try to evolve into the 21st century, the best they can offer is a mutant Bill Clinton against a throwback Bob Dole. The weird thing is that the choice has seldom been clearer. Republicans and Democrats come from completely different species. But their mating calls sound the same if you don't listen closely. And many voters can't stand the high-pitched screeching.
Let's hope they crawl out of the ooze, stand upright and develop higher life forms soon.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. Readers may contact him by phone at 768-8301, by fax 768-8610 or write to 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
Partyspeak
Democrats and Republicans use the same words in their speeches, but they might as well be speaking different languages. To keep track of what they're really saying, you need a glossary:
Education: To Democrats, it means whatever teacher unions want, which is always more spending; to Republicans it means vouchers.
Genocide: Democrats use it to describe the way we are killing the planet; Republicans use it to describe the way abortion is killing unborn children.
Crime: Democrats mean gun control. Republicans mean mandatory life. In the electric chair. No parole.
Taxes: Democrats only raise them on ''rich'' people who earn more than $35,000; Republicans insist we'd all be a lot wealthier if taxes didn't vacuum 40 percent of our paychecks.
Rights: Democrats mean entitlements. Republicans mean the opposite of wrongs.
Jobs: Democrats mean something government needs to increase. Republicans - something the private sector will create if government stops increasing taxes.
Values: Democrats - Whatever you want it to mean. Republicans - Ditto.
Character: Democrats - Something created by Hollywood videos. Republicans - Something missing from the White House for four years.
