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" A NATIONAL KNIFE FIGHT So where exactly are we as a country? Whether you subscribe to the notion that Republicans are corrupt, warmongering oil barons or that Democrats are quivering nancies as eager to flee Iraq as spend your tax dollars--even if you&amp;#039;ve arrived at the eminently defensible conclusion that both labels apply--the answer lies in the suburbs surrounding Chicago&amp;#039;s O&amp;#039;Hare Airport, which happens to be Illinois&amp;#039;s sixth congressional district and the site of a steel-cage showdown that, as much as any race this fall, is a bellwether for where our national politics are headed. The landscape: When political experts dub a district &amp;quot;in transition,&amp;quot; as they have the sixth, they&amp;#039;re usually talking about a suburban area that&amp;#039;s trending from Republican to Democrat. When that happens--and it&amp;#039;s happening across the country--the reliably Republican white-flight voters of a generation ago are gradually displaced by a newer wave of city dwellers, very often Democrats, with an updated list of concerns: They want cheaper real estate, better schools, honest government--in short, they want a nicer &amp;quot;quality of life.&amp;quot; They&amp;#039;ll put up with the hellish commute on the Eisenhower because that&amp;#039;s the price of leaving Chicago for the suburbs. But they won&amp;#039;t put up with excess from either political party. In the 2000 election, Bush won this district in a cakewalk. Four years later, it was a lot closer: Bush won 53 percent, Kerry 47. Since then, polls show that the sixth district, like the country, has soured on Bush--and the district, like the country, now appears almost perfectly balanced between Democrats and Republicans. This is a classic swing district the likes of which will decide the next election, and probably the one after that. The race: Last year, the sixteen-term Republican incumbent, Henry Hyde--you remember Hyde, the octogenarian Clinton-impeachment manager who was revealed to have had his own affair at age forty-five, which he dismissed as a &amp;quot;youthful indiscretion&amp;quot;?--announced his retirement. The open seat makes this race a lab-worthy specimen of a district in transition--as pure a referendum on the parties as there&amp;#039;s likely to be, because no incumbent will be punished or rewarded. If Democrats win this district, it will likely signal a national tide that could sweep across other districts, too. If Republicans win, it&amp;#039;s likely that no tide will be strong enough to push them out of power. The candidates: The two candidates are each, in their way, important representatives of their party. The Democrat, Tammy Duckworth, has gained national attention for her heroic profile as a Black Hawk--helicopter pilot who lost both her legs when she was shot down in Iraq. Duckworth is a living, breathing repudiation of President Bush&amp;#039;s war in Iraq--a Democratic fantasy come to life. &amp;quot;I never thought we should have invaded,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But I served. I went because it was my duty. And I was proud to go.&amp;quot; Duckworth is part of a new breed of Democrat carefully selected by party leaders to counter the damaging perception of liberals as weak on national security and culturally effete. A candidate like this, the thinking goes, gives dissatisfied citizens permission to register their disapproval of the war without getting tangled up psychologically over the Republican charge that any dissent at all over the war is &amp;quot;unpatriotic.&amp;quot; As Duckworth puts it, &amp;quot;They can love the warrior and hate the war.&amp;quot;  That&amp;#039;s about as deep as most political analysts take it. But spend time campaigning with Duckworth and you&amp;#039;ll notice she doesn&amp;#039;t talk much about the war. Instead, the war and her injuries are an opening to talk about kitchen-table issues like health care, taxes, and energy. Her resume gets her past the Republican issues of fear and security. And culturally she&amp;#039;s unorthodox. (How many Democrats can assemble and disassemble their M16 blindfolded?) That&amp;#039;s a good start. But Duckworth and political novices like her will have to persuade voters that they&amp;#039;ll bring more than battlefield valor to Washington.  Her opponent, Pete Roskam, is a twelve-year veteran of the state legislature, well qualified by any measure, and the rare Republican endorsed by the Teamsters. In earlier years, Roskam would be tough to beat. His Republican credentials are sterling: Washington apprenticeship with a movement big shot, pillar-of-the-community status, a law degree, and a lengthy record in state politics that&amp;#039;s solid on litmus-test issues like tort reform and taxes (his twin campaign themes).  But this year, that&amp;#039;s not so hot. For starters, the big shot was indicted ex--majority leader Tom DeLay--that &amp;quot;culture of corruption&amp;quot; charge hits awfully close to home. And the law degree? Turns out Roskam kept his past as a personal-injury attorney hush-hush. His biggest problem, however, could be that he&amp;#039;s too conservative for a swing district. While many of his views are standard-issue conservative--he&amp;#039;s pro-life, antitax, and distrustful of the &amp;quot;liberal media&amp;quot; (he declined an interview)--Roskam&amp;#039;s positions on social issues hew more toward rural Alabama than exurban Illinois. For instance, he doesn&amp;#039;t just oppose government-funded embryonic stem-cell research; he opposes private research, too. And he believes suicide is such a temptation to impressionable teens that he wants to strike all mention of it from public-school curricula--and, yes, that includes Romeo and Juliet and It&amp;#039;s a Wonderful Life. He&amp;#039;ll have to convince voters that he won&amp;#039;t follow his party off a cliff. The stakes: Big political questions surround this race. Will this be a &amp;quot;national&amp;quot; election, like we saw in 1994? Or are congressional races &amp;quot;local elections between local personalities,&amp;quot; as Roskam&amp;#039;s spokesman contends? Is the new brand of macho Democrat really viable? Is the Schiavo wing of the Republican party the last throes of a dying movement?  Ultimately, this race is a proxy battle in the war between the parties, an important signifier of where the country stands that will reveal a deeper truth about where we&amp;#039;re headed. That&amp;#039;s why Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have each raised money for Duckworth, and why Roskam has been feted with fundraisers by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. And each has raised a ton of money (late summer has them both at almost $2 million), much of it from outside the district, a surefire sign that this year, Illinois 6 is a national fight. It will be all but impossible for the Democrats to take control of the House without winning this race--and as difficult for Republicans to hold power if they lose it. 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