Saint Pat's, booze, and ballots.

IN THE space of four days in Chicago, there were two St. Patrick's Day parades, three St. Patrick's celebrations, and one election day, which fell on the actual St. Patrick's Day. Thus for the very first time, since there is no such thing as a dry March 17, both saloons and polling places were open on St. Patrick's Day. The results showed it.

The high point was undoubtedly parade number 2, the South Side Irish parade held on March 15, the day after the Mayor's official Loop parade. Since the mayor had not endorsed a candidate--not even Bill Clinton, who had broadly hinted that Daley would make an admirable running-mate--presidential candidates were not invited to parade number 1.

For the South Side parade, however, Clinton, Paul Tsongas, and Jerry Brown all turned out, to take advantage of full and free media coverage. Brown, unencumbered by heavy security or a retinue of hangers-on, roamed the crowd at will, shaking hands, trading wisecracks, and grinning crookedly like a malign leprechaun. Tsongas, who seemed overwhelmed by all the friendliness on what might have been his last happy day this year, seemed on occasion to skip, waving this hands and at one point hopping awkwardly into the air in some uncoordinated Attic version of A Gaelic clog step.

For the most part, the crowd was good-natured and receptive. However, Bill Clinton--seldom visible because of the security personnel, party functionaries, and media people who totally surrounded him--drew the loudest cheer of the day when a horse ridden by one of the flying squad of mounted police tried to step on him. More troubling to his supporters were the shouts of "draft dodger" and "womanizer." (The week before, Frank Garrison, head of the Michigan AFL-CIO, opined that the next shoe to drop on Clinton "will have a high heel.")

The parade also had a formidable contingent of Bush supporters. Missing was Pat Buchanan, who had inexplicably chosen instead to address a congregation of Baptist teetotalers in Bay City, Michigan, home of the Museum of the Great Lakes. Had he marched, says Chicago Sun-Times political editor Steven Neal, "he would have been greeted as if he were the Wild Colonial Boy." But instead of roaring with the green--and stealing a great block of media time--Buchanan spent the parade day of the Saint for whom he was named with the Baptists of Bay City.

Many here believe that Buchanan was too quick to write off Illinois and his natural constituencies in the state--especially the Catholic Irish, and those disgruntled anti-tax, anti-abortion, pro-education voters who supported insurgent Steve Baer against Jim Edgar in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1990. These voters are, presumably, still there, and still waiting for someone to speak for them as Baer did. In Instead, Buchanan sought to find his nucleus among the blue-collar workers in Michigan, where the economic distress is palpable.

It was among those workers that George Wallace made his most dramatic demonstration, and it was those workers and others like them that the Nixon-Agnew team weaned away from Wallace. The process, as Agnew described it, was one of "positive polarization." It worked to the benefit of the Republican Party and, many of us would argue, of the nation as a whole. And Pat Buchanan was one of its most eloquent architects and articulators.

But that's another story. Today, at least for the moment, social concerns in states like Michigan have been subordinated to the most basic economic concerns, and the constituency Buchanan courted is the constituency Jerry Brown won.

"I went to New Hampshire and I'll tell you what I saw," said Buchanan. "I thought I was back in the 1930s." But when auto-workers in Michigan look back to the Thirties they see Herbert Hoover, and it's FDR they're looking for. And that's where Jerry Brown fills the bill--or, for that matter, any bill. He knows the old New Deal lingo; and he also knows the New Wave stuff.

Buchanan is weighted down with principle; Brown travels light, running the perfect insurgency campaign. He carries just a few bare-bones proposals--his flat-rate of 13 per cent income tax, for instance--that sound plausible and are easily understood, along with a minimal entourage, his 800 number, and a generalized and adaptable attack on corruption of all kinds, whether venal (Congress), or venereal (Clinton), or both (Clinton again).

Brown moves fast and thinks quickly, in Michigan linking the jobs issue to the trade agreement, which he described as "a jobs program for Mexico. What we need," said Brown, "is a jobs program for America."

Meanwhile, the Bush forces opened up on Buchanan, pointing out in television ads that he owns a Mercedes and that he once called American cars "lemons." As part of the campaign, male voters were mailed a mocked-up photo of Buchanan leaning on--you guessed it--an oversized lemon. Buchanan protested, claiming that the car belonged to his wife and that he also owned a Cadillac. But the America First image was damaged, and auto-workers in Flint reacted angrily.

There is no doubt that Buchanan's campaign was badly damaged by the Illinois and Michigan primaries. As for Tsongas, his poor showing meant the end of his effort--whereas Brown will bedevil and bushwhack Clinton from now to California.

And the other results? The incumbency issue was a wash, with redistricting playing at least as much of a role as anti-incumbent fever. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, who entered Congress when General Eisenhower occupied the White House, and 11-term incumbent Phil Crane were both challenged principally on the issue of their incumbency. Both won hands down.

The headlines, however, were made by the defeat of Senator Alan Dixon, a defeat predicted by no one, whether journalist, pollster, politician, or pundit. Most surprised of all was Al Hofeld, a Chicago lawyer who spent some $5 million of his own money to make his face known and loathed on television, portraying Dixon as "Al the Pal," a tool of special interests. For the first time in his career, Dixon began to run negative ads in response. And as the two men flailed away, Carol Moseley Braun, Cook County Recorder of Deeds, quietly walked away with the nomination.

Up against Miss Braun in November will be Rich Williamson, a longtime conservative who has held posts in the Reagan and Bush Administrations. Williamson is expected to run a strongly conservative race against the liberal Miss Braun, who decided to run because of Alan Dixon's support of Clarence Thomas. That issue was not stressed in the primary, but radical feminists say they intend to make the general-election campaign a rematch of the Hill-Thomas war.

Another incumbent falling, this one to great cheers, was Gus Savage, thumped by Mel Reynolds, a former Rhodes Scholar and a black believer in better race relations who would be well advised to stay away from dark alleys until the New Year. Reynolds, shot and wounded during the campaign, won largely thanks to redistricting, which brought South Suburban commuters into Savage's district.

As for the check-kiting scandal, the only casualty here was Representative Charles Hayes, who told his constitutients that is overdrafts didn't hurt a single child. Hayes was defeated by Bobby Rush, thus ensuring that Chicago will send our nation's very first ex-Black Panther representative to Congress.

And finally there was the big incumbent himself. Perhaps it was because his polls in Illinois and Michigan were so strong, or perhaps he knows something about that other high-heeled shoe. But whatever the reasons, in appearances in Chicago before the Polish Alliance and other groups, George Bush seemed unusually relaxed and confident.

Especially among the ethnic groups here, there is genuine affection for the President, who is seen as the keeper of the Nixon-Reagan legacy that led to the liberation of Eastern Europe. At the Polish Alliance dinner, he was introduced as "the world's number-one freedom-fighter." And as the man who was once his and Mr. Buchanan's boss reminded them both recently, that's a designation to cherish.