At its best, the capital city is a handsome place of broad boulevards, imposing architecture, world-class museums and fine restaurants. There are eminently walkable historic neighborhoods, above all Georgetown, with its fine old townhouses famously housing past and future presidential advisers or secretaries of state. The city's first lure, of course, has always been the tangible faces of governmental power - the Capitol, the Supreme Court building, the White House and, across the Potomac River, the sprawling Pentagon. Of recent additions, the rough-hewn granite Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial is well worth a visit.
Streets are cleaner, potholes fewer, the police and helpful city-paid guides more in evidence.
Now, with the Nov. 7 elections only weeks away and the debating season in full flower, Washingtonians particularly those Democrats who stand to lose jobs if George W. Bush prevails over Al Gore - are getting swept up by election fever. Employees, all of them political scientists or junkies, say the poll has proved accurate over the years. One of the finest is The Jefferson, which has many fine antiques and canopied beds, stereos, VCRs and 24-hour butlers. Get a room in the Watergate, where Nixon's ''plumbers '' broke into Democratic Party offices. 2650 Virginia Ave.