ARIANNA'S FATAL FLAW SHE BUYS POLITICIANS' ACT, BUT PUTS ON A HECK OF A CIRCUS.

Byline: Kimit A. Muston Local view

I felt sad for Arianna Huffington on Sunday. She put together a delightful opening for her circus in Philadelphia, her Shadow Convention, intended as a counterpoint to the Republican gathering. She drew a nice crowd. She had acrobats, jugglers and a man shooting his mouth out of a cannon - that would be Mr. Campbell from San Jose.

And then an elephant showed up and ruined the entire show.

Still, it was predictable. Arianna is an intellectual, a lady of high ideals with one big character flaw: She believes what politicians tell her.

She believed Newt Gingrich when he told her he was interested in education. But Newt doesn't want anybody smarter than he is, which means if he ever gets back into power, we may have to close every university in the country. And a few high schools, too. Arianna doesn't like Newt anymore, but she helped to get the Republican Congress elected in 1994 and that was all that Newt wanted from her.

The same thing happened again Sunday. But this time, the betrayer was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. He was supposed to talk about campaign finance reform, an issue that darn near made him the Republican presidential candidate and one of the three big issues Arianna's Shadow Convention is addressing. The other two are reform of the national drug policy and the growing gap between rich and want-to-be rich, or as the convention refers to them, ``the poor.''

The senator did talk reform, but then he told the room full of laid-back pseudo-cynical pseudo-revolutionaries that Mr. Establishment from Texas, George Walker Bush, was Mr. Reform in disguise. (Clark Kent should look so good on Halloween.) It gagged the audience. Loud booing burst forth and shouts of ``Get him off!'' rang through the arena. It's a good thing that most of the Shadow folks are in favor of gun control or somebody might have taken a shot at McCain.

Arianna had to grab the microphone and chastise her followers. They sat in disrespectful silence until the senator finished, but it was sad to see Arianna defending McCain's right to disrespect her in front of her supporters.

But this guy was a naval officer, remember, the son and grandson of naval officers. A revolutionary, in Navy terms, is a guy who files a complaint. Complain twice and you are an anarchist, three times and you're a civilian. And once you get your orders, you follow them.

Well, the Republican string-pullers said John had to praise G.W. and John did as he was told.

I'm sure Sen. McCain is going to be swallowing his pride a lot this week but that is the price of a job in a Bush administration. But Arianna - poor, trusting Arianna - was expecting more from him.

She was also expecting media coverage of her ``convention of ideas.'' All she got was 10 seconds on the evening news shows of McCain being booed. What the national media did on Sunday was interview Dick Cheney and take turns asking each other what they thought about him. This is what passes for electronic news in the early 21st century - reporters interviewing each other. How informative.

On the Fox News Channel, of course, they spent most of Sunday doing what they do every day, discussing what a bad nasty man Bill Clinton is.

If I could speak with Arianna, I would say, ``Listen, girlfriend, you've got to stop believing what every John, Newt and Harry tells you. Politicians are all alike. They just want to get their hands on your ideas. And the minute they do, all they can think about is the ideas on the next girl.''

Would she listen to me? Probably not. But then Arianna Huffington without a fatal flaw wouldn't be half as interesting.

And now to Tom Campbell. He's a Republican and in case you haven't heard (and many haven't) he's running against Dianne Feinstein for senator. He has almost as much chance of winning the race as a limping gazelle delivering pizza to a pride of lions. His strategy consists of swallowing gasoline, soaking himself in hot wax, holding a lighted match to his lips and belching.

He announced to the convention that he is in favor of shorter sentences and more treatment programs for drug users. This is fiscally responsible, logical and moral, and it is possible he actually believes in it. It thus stands no chance of ever being discussed rationally. And if the Democratic lioness doesn't completely destroy Campbell in the election, Republican vultures will finish him off afterward.

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Photo: The Philadelphia Shadow Convention Arianna Huffington, right, is leading isn't going too well so far. A second one is set for Los Angeles this month.

Reed Saxon/Associated Press