Anyone who attempts to place context onto the 2000 election mess is probably jumping off the blocks early, but an interesting pattern seems to be developing in the country's partisan political warfare.

Welcome to the age of counterprogramming. The election was so close and the Congress so divided not due to the parties' ability to state their core values, but rather their ability to appear to be moderating those values.

In 1992, Clinton made the Democrats cool again by supporting capital punishment and pledging to end "welfare as we know it." In 2000 Bush resurrected the party of Gingrich by adding the word "compassion" to its vocabulary. And so the battle is joined.

In my home state our Democratic Party ran ads for legislative candidates touting the fact that they would be independent of their very popular Democratic Governor. I know I'm not breaking new ground by reviewing the fact that candidates try to play to undecided middle voters. What is new, though, is the bizarre policy expectations created by this form of counterprogramming.

It's like a new Nixon-to-China every day.

A reverse psychology has dawned on the art of the possible. The welfare bill that Clinton signed could not have been signed by a GOP President, at least not in a first term. The federal spending Bush will be proposing on education would draw howls if attempted by a Democrat. Watch as Bush is pressured into whacking away at his $1.6 trillion tax cut and trades off on huge social spending just to save a much smaller tax cut. The new logic seems to be: do policy that proves you are not what the voters expect you will be. Therefore, the best education and human services candidates are Republicans and the best defense and fiscal policy officeholders will be Democrats. Look at the leading anti-war-on-drugs official in the country -- Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who is a Republican.

If you are a lobbyist you must apply this logic and seek out your previously unlikely allies to help you pass your agenda. And that skill, in a closely divided policymaking environment, will produce results. You build a coalition around one issue, and simultaneously someone else is building a different coalition around a different issue, and the only sure thing is that no one will be sticking to their party's agenda. In fact, maybe legislators should keep a copy of their party platform on hand just to be certain they don't follow it too often.

And this brings me to my central point: If candidates go out promising to do things voters do not expect candidates of their ilk to do, and then after being elected actually enact policy that is counter to their party's position just to prove they're not too partisan, and we all know why the positions are being taken and policies enacted, then WHAT IS A POLITICAL PARTY? Are parties not quaint anachronisms that we keep around to help us make sense of a complicated policy horizon, even in an age where politicians are really free agents?

In their ridiculous emphasis on written platforms, legislative seniority and the loyalty of their donor base, aren't they observing what was left of their credibility as organizations dramatically eroded? I had a political science text called The Decline of American Political Parties in a class in 1988! Imagine what the title of that book is today.

If everyone can cross enemy lines whenever they need to in order to get into office and/or stay there, what is the function of the party?

Yes, there are appointments to be made and snail darters to research and a million small things government does when no one is looking. Parties certainly can assist with the small stuff. But when the time comes to move the big trucks, meet the big challenges head-on the parties are not really helpful guides as to what a given official might do.

I really think the distinction between the strong electoral performance by Perot in 1992 on the one hand, and the total failure of presidential candidates Buchanan and Nader in 2000 on the other is that Perot didn't have an established party. His free agency was a part of the appeal.

He was a nut, but he was nobody's nut, you know?

The election of 2000 gave us the sound of the parties as we know them cracking under their own dead weight. I predict party labels will remain on ballots throughout my lifetime, but will mean less and less until their relevance is completely wrung out. Just wishful thinking?

John Hedgecoth is a free-trade, anti-welfare, anti-capital gains tax, anti-spending, Baptist, drug-fighting, debt-reducing, card-carrying Democrat.