October 4, 1992

REPUBLICANS have captured every Congressional election in the Fourth District since 1968 when Lowell P. Weicker Jr. was elected. The district -- Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, New Canaan, Norwalk, Westport, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Trumbull and most of Monroe -- has been held by the G.O.P. longer than any other in the state. Two years ago, in a landslide, United States Representative Christopher Shays received 77 percent of the vote, the highest percentage of any winner in the six Congresssional races in Connecticut that year.

On a ridge overlooking Spokane Valley, Jim Frank is selling houses almost as fast as he can build them. Here, amid tall stands of Ponderosa pine and honey-colored fields, it's easy to imagine how the area used to be in the late 19th century when it was a train stop between Seattle and Minneapolis. Certainly, Spokane, 280 miles east of Seattle and just a few miles from the Idaho border, is off the beaten track and isolated from major metropolitan areas. But enough people have discovered it to give Mr. Frank a place in what the National Association of Realtors says is one of the fastest-appreciating housing markets in the nation. The valley, where apple orchards once thrived, has been carved up into numerous housing subdivisions, two shopping malls and the area's largest industrial park.

Until recently, the choice of a comprehensive book on New York landmarks was either lite or Lucullan: an 82-page free pamphlet from the Landmarks Preservation Commission that was out of date or "The Landmarks of New York," by Barbaralee Diamonstein, which has 416 richly illustrated pages but costs $49.50 and is scarcely portable.

Testifying to the cruelty of modern building codes, the lines to the women's rooms at the Capitol Center in this Washington suburb extend out the door, across the hall and down the hall. If the entertainment were a Bullets basketball game, no such bottlenecks would hamper the smooth flow of humanity to its appointed seats. But tonight, the humanity breaks down to about nine females to one male. The men appear to fall into two categories: bewildered husbands and courting boyfriends. The women, many bonded in large groups, range in age from single digits to early 70's. Unlike many rock concerts, no miasma of spilled beer and vomit wafts through the air-conditioning. Perfume is the odor of the hour. When the lights go down, this middle-class multitude erupts into a terrifying howl, like a tornado touching down, an eerie groan of lust and yearning unheard since the Maenads were dismembering male witnesses to their Dionysian rituals in ancient Greece.

Under the pressure of a Presidential campaign, Gov. Bill Clinton has been trying to outline his own unique foreign policy, while at the same time fending off criticism from the Bush White House that he is a closet dove masquerading as a hawk and that his experience in world affairs is limited to breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. Although foreign policy has not been a big issue in this first campaign after the cold war, Mr. Clinton has laid out his internationalist vision in four speeches over the last year, knowing that he cannot pass the Commander in Chief test without appearing credible in this area.