HAIL TO THE REV.(The Talk of the Town)(presidential candidate Al Sharpton)(Interview)

Imagine, for a moment, Al Sharpton's Washington. Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam Records, is in the West Wing, at work on hip-hop outreach. In the Oval Office, the President is talking policy with a group of Harvard professors. "I would bring a perfect mixture of the urban north and the southern gospel to the White House--a mixture of Russell Simmons and a good plate of fried chicken while I discuss how we get clean water in underdeveloped countries," the Reverend said last week, in his gravelly preacher's voice. "That would be a normal day at the White House under the Sharpton Administration."

"Rev," as the members of his campaign staff call him, is New York's first legitimate presidential candidate in more than thirty years, despite the fact that he has never won an election. He has been polling at between two and six per cent. "It would probably be a very actively social White House," he said, leaning back in his chair, in his campaign headquarters, in midtown, "because my wife comes out of entertainment." Kathy Jordan, the prospective First Lady in question, used to be a backup singer for James Brown. "I would totally leave that up to her. The one person I try not to manage is my wife."

To judge from experience, his would not be a punctual White House. One hour, two hours: despite the super-sized wristwatch he wears, and a talking cell phone ("You have an incoming call"), Rev always seems to be running late. Last month, he even kept the Dalai Lama waiting, at a Town Hall forum; his tardiness may or may not account for the Lama's refusal to grant him an endorsement. (For Sharpton, all was not lost. "When I was a kid at Tilden high school in New York, I had read about Zen Buddhism and transcendental meditation. I even used to chant 'Om,' and it brought me back to those days," he said of the encounter with His Holiness.)

Last week, once he settled in at his headquarters, he took the occasion to critique his fellow-candidates and offer some perspective on the primary campaign, which he likened to the race in 1984, when Jesse Jackson first ran. In both cases, he pointed out, the Democratic Party was in disarray, and was facing a popular, tax-cutting Republican incumbent. "The early front-runners back then," he said, "were a former Vice-President, Walter Mondale; a national hero, John Glenn; and a younger technocrat, ...