We have collected all the presidential candidates’ statements about America’s recently discovered judge crisis, and fed them into a computer. The machine has peered six months into the future and projected some of the questions and answers in the Big Debate.

Q: I’d like to ask how each of you would change the federal judiciary. And Senator Dole, please explain whether you are here tonight as the Bob Dole who voted to confirm 98 percent of President Clinton’s judges, or the one who blames them for the crime problem and "the crisis in our courts."

Sen. Bob Dole: Bob Dole is here as the Bob Dole who lets Bob Dole be Bob Dole. And when Bob Dole is president, there will be no more liberal judges. No more moderates, either. Only Bob Dole judges-you know, here a Dole, there a Dole, everywhere a Dole Dole. No cowardly, craven, crime-coddling judges. No Democrat judges.

Bob Dole’s judges will be so tough,we won’t be able to build gas chambers and electric chairs and gallows and firing squads and lethal-injection get-ups fast enough. We’ll have to bring in Dr. Kevorkian to move things along.Bob Dole’s judges will pack guns under their robes and wear NRA membership cards like badges of honor.

President Bill Clinton: Me, too. Toughness and diversity, that’s what we want. But my judges will be tougher, and more vigorous and youthful too, and more supportive of Medicare and the minimum wage. And the problem is the Republicans not supporting these things, or our police, and not putting more cops on the beat-cops who can kill the criminals before they ever get to court, and I love it when they do that, I just want to hug them all.

And as for executions, I’d like to see a lot more of them myself-three, four, five a day. That’s why I flew back to Arkansas from the New Hampshire primary in 1992 to ice that brain-damaged guy, Rickey Ray Rector. And that’s why I gutted habeas corpus in our counter-terrorism bill and created more secret courts-to keep those soft Republican judges from turning loose any more criminals, guilty or innocent, or stopping any executions.

Ross Perot: Listen up. These two yo-yos here, they’re like peas in a pod. And you people in the press, you said I was crazy when I exposed the conspiracy to sabotage my daughter’s wedding. Crazy, huh? I think we’ve all seen proof positive of it right here. These are two of the most conspiratorial slickies I’ve ever seen, both yammering on like they use the same speechwriter.

And as for judges, who needs ’em? What this country needs is someone who can open up the hood and make the damn thing work, and I never saw a judge who could do that. So forget the judges, and the lawyers, and get down to business here. And as for that judge they put in up there in New York, who let that drug lady go free with all the cocaine in her car trunk, and who said any ghetto kid in his right mind would hightail it at the sight of a cop …

Dole: Tell him to stop lying about my record.

Clinton: That’s my record he’s lying about-I mean, Senator Moynihan’s record: He’s the one who picked Judge Harold Baer. I had nothing to do with him, hardly.

He made a big mistake, Judge Baer did, but I’m proud to say that we told him to eat that opinion, or we would demand his resignation. And he got religion fast, and he ate it. So I don’t buy this Republican nonsense about independence of the judiciary. And I don’t think you need to worry about Judge Baer upholding any more constitutional rights anytime soon.

Now, maybe Bob Dole made a mistake when he voted to confirm Judge Baer, but that’s not my fault. And what about Judge Deanell Reece Tacha, out on the 10th Circuit? She laid some technicality on a state trooper who found crack cocaine in a duffel bag in a car trunk. And she’s a Bob Dole judge, and we’re not about to let Bob Dole or anybody else forget it.

We’ve got a whole dossier on your judges, Bob Dole, and if you want to play that game, the message is, your judges are softer than our judges.

Perot: C’mon, Dole, he’s mopping the floor with you. Get up and pop the bugger …

Q: Mr. President, is it true, as the Republicans say, that you would appoint more liberal justices to the Supreme Court than they would?

Clinton: Liberal? You talkin’ liberal? How about Earl Warren? He was a Republican, wasn’t he? And William Brennan-he was appointed by a Republican president too, wasn’t he? And wasn’t John Paul Stevens? A more liberal, soft-on-crime trio would be hard to find. And then there’s that criminal-coddling, Bush-appointed David Souter. You voted for him, Bob Dole.

Now, I’m proud of my Supreme Court justices, especially Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She’s no softie for constitutional rights, not where criminal defendants are involved, especially the male ones. And their wives, too-innocent or guilty, Ruth doesn’t care, she takes their cars all the same.

Some of those forfeiture cases they’ve had up there lately, she’s so tough, she makes Rehnquist and Scalia and Thomas look like pansies. Why, she’d forfeit her own husband’s car if he smoked a joint in it. Wouldn’t even ask if he’d inhaled-just forfeit the sucker. And back in 1994, she voted to drug-test the school kids who try out for sports teams.

In my next term, I may get to choose a new chief justice, and Ruth wants it bad. And if she promises to keep sticking it to the ACLU and looking tough on crime, why, I might give it to her. And that’s one of the reasons all the women in America should vote for me, and all the men too, if they don’t want criminal defendants having constitutional rights.

And that was an all-Republican lineup that struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act last year, in United States v. Lopez. That went over big with the gun lobby, but not with the police. That was Republicans making schools safe for gun-toting criminals.

Dole: Huh? Bob Dole thought we were talking about judges and crime, and he keeps changing the subject. They don’t call him Slick Willie for nothing. But Bob Dole believes in the right to bear arms. Bore one myself, during the war, until Bob Dole got shot up, but Bob Dole doesn’t dwell on being a hero.

Some say that Bob Dole’s judges have been soft on guns, or crime, but that’s not what Bob Dole says. Guns aren’t crime, crime is crime. And Bob Dole says what’s on his mind, even when there isn’t much on it. Bob Dole is a doer, not a talker. The president has too much on his mind, and that jug-eared little creep over there, he’s out of his mind.

Perot: Tell that senile old stumblebum to stop lying about my ears.

And tell that draft-dodging, pot-smoking, brief-wearing womanizer to knock off the glib gobbledygook about judicial jabberwocky. I hire lawyers for that.

Q: How would each of you screen candidates for federal judgeships in your administration?

Dole: No more left-wing American Bar Association. Bob Dole will have a committee-NRA, National Right to Life Committee, Christian Coalition, National Right to Work outfit, some kind of anti-tax group, anti-quotas, maybe Pat Buchanan.

To all you Buchanan voters out there, Bob Dole will be another Pat Buchanan if that’s what you want. You want recall elections for federal judges? You got ’em Plebiscites to overturn Supreme Court rulings? Deal.

Clinton: Me, too. I’d let the police chiefs choose all the judges, from a tough, multicultural list prepared by the National Abortion Rights Action League, the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, and the fund-raisers at the Democratic National Committee.

And of course, they would be hearing from Hillary, and they could consult with folks like Anita Hill, and scholars like Barbra Streisand, and Minister Farrakhan-except on days when he’s calling the Jews bloodsuckers-and any other people that connect with constituency groups out there or raise a lot of money.

Perot: I’d have my own SWAT team check ’em out-same boys who helped me bust loose those hostages in Iran that time, and chased off those Viet Cong assassins who came across my lawn back in ’72-and the German shepherd worked ’em like a sheep dog, he did. Any dog that can handle five armed-to-the-teeth Viet Cong can pick a bunch of judges.

Q: How does the Justice Department fit into your plans to fight crime and drugs?

Clinton: Janet Reno has been a great attorney general. She’s a woman, and very tall, and does whatever the PR boys tell her to do. What more could you want?

You Republicans will just have to keep tearing your hair out, Bob Dole, because we took the tough-on-crime pose from you, and we ain’t giving it back, no matter how many attorneys general we have to lobotomize to get them with the program.

Dole: Tell him to stop bragging about his record.