Missing stories department.

Instead of "Pundit Watch" this column should be called "Soothsayer Watch." Each week, in the face of some of the most morally bankrupt and socially destructive legislative proposals of the century, the "pundits" look not at current events, but into tea leaves, crystal balls, and their own palms to predict what will happen next summer or next year. The McLaughlin Group couldn't fill more than ten minutes without the relentless discussions focused on predicting the future, especially individual, elite, white men.

This spares them having to confront what Clinton has rightly labeled the Republican war against children. (Fred Barnes's comment on converting the school-lunch program into block grants? After the initial "hysteria," he says, "the public's going to love it.") The two perennial soothsayer favorites are: who will be the Republican nominee? Will he beat Clinton?

These are total time-wasters since no one can answer either question. But at least it relieves the obligation of reflecting on the twenty-five-count perjury indictment against James Watt. It turns out Watt launched a little welfare reform program of his own, allegedly siphoning millions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to some needy landlords and developers--you know, people not gripped by the "culture of dependency" afflicting usual HUD beneficiaries. Then Watt allegedly lied to Congress. The Watt scandal is just one of many examples of legal and illegal corporate welfare, but I'm sorry, my dears, we can't discuss that on television. It would foment "class warfare" against the rich.

Another recent McLaughlin Group topic--preferred over, say, the Republican plan to "reform" tort law so it will be harder to sue the purveyors of defective or dangerous products--was whether O.J. will be acquitted or not. Panelists were also asked to foresee what the impact on American politics would be of an O.J. acquittal, and which political party will benefit the most from his getting off, the Republicans or the Democrats. I swear--I am not making this up.

When pundits live in the future, certain present-day grotesqueries can escape notice. Here is one of the headlines we didn't get to see last month: Congressman Jim Bunn Freezes Out Poor People to Build Visitors' Center. (Okay, so I'm no headline writer.) During one of the more infamous budget-cutting sprees by the House Appropriations Committee--the one where they approved cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, summer-jobs programs, rural-housing loans, school lunches for kids, nutritional programs for pregnant women and children of preschool age, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--the Republican Congressman from Oregon insisted on keeping the $6.5 million budgeted for his visitors' center. How to fund it in these lean times? By eliminating $4.8 million from the Energy Department's heating-assistance program, a cut which Will affect approximately six million low-income people. This should be front-page news, wit Bunn's photo splattered eve such luck.

When it comes to race, however, and the benighted, oppressive, discriminatory conditions confronting upper-middle-class white men, there are pundits who will live in the present, and few of them with as much vitriol and hysteria as George Will. Imagine a cross between Joe McCarthy, Howard Stern, and Hannibal Lector and you will have a close approximation of his behavior toward Joycelyn Elders when she appeared as a guest on This Week with David Brinkley. Can you imagine Will constantly interrupting Bob Dole or Phil Gramm with "That's not what I asked" or "Would you answer the question?" (even though they rarely answer the question). That's what he did to Elders in an unvarnished display of white male arrogance. His performance was a perfect demonstration of why we still need affirmative action in this country.

He was equally rabid when discussing the case of besieged President Francis Lawrence of Rutgers University, under attack for some racially insensitive remarks for which he has publicly apologized. Lawrence, it turns out, has one of the best records in the country for increasing minority and female representation among the student body, the faculty, and the administration. Will relished Lawrence's predicament as he launched into this tirade. "It serves him right ... he has gone out of his way ... to conform to every jot and tiddle of the politically correct, multicultural agenda ... there is no interest group on the left that he will not pander to. He likes speech codes? Good, he's now living with the results of speech codes ... He likes all the rigmarole of enforced orthodoxy, and he's now having it enforced upon him ... He built this kind of world, and if he finds it painful, good." See, it's white bleeding-heart liberals who are really responsible for racial tensions in America.

The one good thing about affirmative action suddenly becoming such a hot topic is that black men we don't get to see enough of--such as Congressman Charles Rangel and Professor William Julius Wilson--appeared recently on Meet the Press, and eloquently confronted head-on the racist agenda of Congress. Their commentary was a painful reminder of how empty the air waves are of liberal, let alone progressive policy proposals. And, of course, we were reminded that African-American experts are rarely given air time except to talk about race-related issues.

Silent and invisible during all of the recent debate about slashing federal programs for poor people and their children were the children themselves. When the soothsayers look to the future, kids are never in the picture, at least not other people's kids. But they will be. I wonder what would happen to our national discourse, and to pending legislation in Congress, if for one week the nightly news and the talk shows were turned over to the kids of America, especially kids whose families live at or below the poverty line, kids on welfare, kids who learned their numbers and the alphabet from Sesame Street, kids in foster homes, kids who would go hungry without the school-lunch program. I don't think they'd be at all interested in predicting what will happen in New Hampshire a year from now.