(FORTUNE Magazine) – Bob Dole wants to overhaul welfare. So does Bill Clinton. Clinton wants a Constitutional amendment enshrining victims' rights. So does Dole. Dole wants to cut capital gains taxes. So does Clinton. It all sounds very nonconfrontational. It sounds, in fact, as if these guys agree on everything (except maybe the designated-hitter rule). It almost sounds like the end of ideology.

Not so fast. This fall's presidential election may seem like a world-class snoozer instead of the political Armageddon the experts told us to expect, but it's a phony peace if ever there was one. Clinton and Dole are evading the (ideological) war like mad, but it'll come roaring back soon. Look for it around noon Eastern Time on Wednesday, November 6.

Here's why: Ideology isn't dead, it's just in hibernation. This fall's presidential campaign is about as uplifting as Saturday afternoon TV wrestling (with about half the suspense), but it's frustrating less for what the candidates are saying than for what they're not saying. The liberals in the Democratic Party are biting their tongues to reelect Clinton. The conservatives in the Republican Party are doing the same thing for Dole. "On the wings of both parties, where the energy and passion of politics are, people aren't saying what they're thinking," says Jeff Faux, president of the Economic Policy Institute.

Come the day after the election, the gag order expires. Republicans and Democrats will fight like confined cats. They'll suddenly find that they don't agree about Social Security, Medicare, or whether the era of big government is over after all. Take away a paragraph or two, and the two presidential candidates could have swapped acceptance speeches this summer and nobody would have noticed. (Quick: Which party's nominee didn't mention welfare reform in his speech? Which didn't mention civil rights? The answer: not what you think.) By mid-November there'll be plenty to disagree about, and it won't be pretty.

But the fight between the two parties will be nothing compared with the fights inside the two parties.

If Dole loses, watch for a full-scale rebellion by religious conservatives, whose message can be distilled to this: We were good boys. We kept in the background. But we lost because Bob Dole walked away from the social issues, the family, abortion. And watch for this from Pat Buchanan: Hey, I behaved too. But we lost because we weren't attentive to worker grievances.

All that will be downright peaceful compared with the fights inside the Democratic Party if it wins the House in November. The bake-off between Speaker Dick Gephardt, who has become more of a traditional big-city liberal with the passing of every year, and Vice President Al Gore, who has become more of a moderate each year, could go nuclear. Gore is taking pains to spend more time with the unions, but at heart he's a free-trader. Gephardt is talking rapprochement with the Administration, but at heart he's an economic nationalist. This marriage can't be saved.

Now, just to add a perverse note, let's throw a recession into the mix. At some point in the next four years there's going to be one, as sure as I sit here. And then no one will talk about the end of ideology anymore. The GOP budget balancers (and their born-again allies within the Democratic Party) will face an economic downturn with little ability to spend money. The old-line liberals will want to boost the economy, create purchasing power, and pass jobs programs. In that ideological war, the survivors will envy the dead.

One last scenario, maybe the most likely: Clinton's reelected, the voters return another GOP Congress. Both will be feeling pretty good, pumped up with a lot of nonsense about "mandates." There will be a crackle in the air in Washington next winter, but it won't be good vibrations. It'll be invective. "Give the Democrats' power back," says Grover Norquist, the conservative theorist who has the ear of Speaker Newt Gingrich, "and they'll go back to Hillary Clinton's health plan." As for Gingrich, he may actually appear in public again, he may start using the word "revolution" again, and he may even believe it again.

"I've never wanted to watch interactions between Congress and the President as much as I will in the next two years," says Samuel Popkin, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego. Get your gas masks now. It will be no phony peace and no phony war.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political