From laughing with children . . . to schmoozing with contenders . . . to

THE hurricane season is fizzling out, the last ball has been pitched in Baseball's World Series and the scarlet leaves of the northeast's dazzling autumn foliage lie shrivelling on the ground.

It is a time of year when Americans are losing their tans and starting to think ahead to the major holiday seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But it being a year which ends in an even number, there's just one little obstacle to get out of the way before most of the country can settle down in front of the fireplace for winter.

In nine days' time, the country will go to the polls for mid-term elections - it being halfway through a presidential term - in which the entire House of Representatives, one-third of the Senate and a gaggle of state governorships are up for grabs.

That giant sucking sound the nation is just beginning to hear is the sound of hundreds of millions of dollars being siphoned away on the campaign trail, as candidates take to the hustings and the airwaves to try to convince voters that, even if they aren't exactly the best person for the job, they are a darn sight less disagreeable than their opponent.

From the wheat fields of Kansas to the bayou of Louisiana, from the smoke stacks of Ohio to the golf courses of Florida, the rhetoric level is rising and the campaign strategists are shifting into fifth gear - all in the name of the great American democratic tradition of sending a few hundred politicians to Washington, which, to 99.9 per cent of citizens might as well be another planet.

Unfortunately for the candidates and their party elders, the other sucking sound one can hear is the giant inhalation of breath that comes with a collective national yawn. Turnout in the mid-terms is often low - about 30 per cent - but that does not usually inhibit the energy of the campaigns. In 1998, however, the politicians and party aparatchiks are faced with a rare dilemma: they are unsure what the voters want, or what they should be telling them in order to win their support.