Paper or Plastic? Macintosh or IBM? Regular or premuim unleaded? Coke or Pepsi?

   All these choices, and many more, seem to have much more immediate importance and bearing on our ordinary lives than "Bush or Gore?" This year’s presidential dilemma, though, is crucial. After all, whoever gets elected is going to appear on our TV screens every night for the next four years.

   Sometimes it may seem as though the differences between Al Gore and George W. Bush are wholly trivial. For instance, George W. Bush is widely considered to possess much less gray matter than Al Gore, and is much more prone to fumbling polysyllabic words such as "apple."

   Gore, on the other hand, speaks fluently and without interruption, but has been labeled a "serial exaggerator" for making outrageous claims like having "taken the initiative in creating the Internet." Al Gore won the first and third debates, but lost the post-debate media coverage for pulling such stunts as sighing loudly and "stalking" his opponent.

   However, there is one significant difference between this year’s presidential candidates that voters ought to consider: Bush and Gore’s divergent views on the appropriate size of the federal government. Al Gore believes that the government can be effective if used to solve an ever-increasing number of problems in American life.

   He wants to help out senior-citizens by giving them billions of dollars with which to purchase brand name prescription drugs. Of course, he wouldn’t be entirely friendly to the elderly; their Lincoln Town Cars and Mercury Marquises are unlikely to meet Gore’s new fuel-efficiency standards.

   Lately, Al Gore has tried to make some gains on the small-government ground that George W. Bush currently holds, taking credit for a peacetime reduction in military personnel and attempting to cast George W. Bush’s tax cut plan as a deliberate redistribution of wealth from the middle to the upper class.

   He is unlikely to be successful in attaining the reputation of "the small government candidate" though, especially when his own tax plan gives deductions and credits to owners of hybrid electric vehicles and roof-mounted photovoltaic power supply systems. Al Gore thinks of this as, "relief for middle-class families."

   If voters were required to take the Hippocratic Oath ("First, do no harm...") before going to the polls, Bush would win in a landslide. Al Gore’s proposals embody, more than Bush’s, an attempt to establish more authority over the way we live our lives.

   It is widely agreed that neither Al Gore nor George W. Bush would be an inspiring and imminently competent President. When choosing between such decidedly average men as Bush and Gore, we should hope the one who wants to do less — George W. Bush — gets elected.

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