For those who are seriously

considering the issues in this year's presidential election, and who haven't

yet made up their minds, two questions probably figure prominently in

the decision-making process.

1. Is Al Gore exaggerating

when he says that most of George W. Bush's proposed tax cuts would got

to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans?

2. Is George Bush telling the

truth when he says that our military is in dire straits due to the Clinton

Administration's neglect and over-commitment?

I may be overly optimistic

on that second one. Maybe nobody cares about that. We tend to be pretty

complacent about the military until somebody slips past our forward observers

with a few hundred bombers and practically obliterates our navy.

Yes, I know that was almost

60 years ago. I just chose it because it's the most obvious example. But

there have been plenty of instances since then when our best and brightest

have lost their lives in conflicts for no other reason than that our armed

forces were unprepared.

I wish we could erect a memorial

with all the names of the men and women who have died but who might have

lived if they had had the training, equipment and strength of numbers

that they needed when we sent them into harm's way.

I'm hoping that during this

election most people accept the fact that we need a strong military, and

they're just trying to decide which candidate will be the best at making

sure we have one.

In the last debate, Gore set

a trap for himself when he forcefully stated, as he has in the past, that

our military is ready for any problem that comes up, then boasted that

he proposes to increase military spending by $100 billion while Bush proposes

only $45 billion.

If everything's so hunky dory,

why do we need to increase military spending by $100 billion, Mr. Gore?

Of course our people in uniform

can carry out their missions. That's not the question.

The question is whether they

can do it in a timely manner, and how many of them will die or be wounded

because they are under-supported and over-deployed.

Since the question came up

early in the campaign, I have read dozens if not hundreds of news reports

from major outlets like the Washington Post, as well as from associations

of military retirees and other organizations close to the armed forces.

The evidence is overwhelming

that morale in the military is almost as low as it was following Vietnam.

Experienced officers and noncoms

are leaving in droves, not because they're lured by the private sector

as Gore proposes, but because they're fed up with how they're being treated.

The number of deployments coupled

with the reduction in the number of people naturally has resulted in troops

being in the field for longer and longer periods, and the increased use

of reserve troops to shore up our numbers has sent thousands of reservists

packing as well.

We have people in danger spots

who have had very little training. There have been well-publicized plane

crashes and other accidents that have resulted in loss of life due, at

least in part, to this lack of training.

And if a major conflict were

to erupt today, yes, we would get there, and yes, we would prevail. But

we would get there weeks later than we should, and we would have to fight

harder to catch up as a result.

The Clinton/Gore Administration

has done this on purpose. The Cold War is over, we were told, and we can

take those "peace dividends" (funny how you never hear that

phrase from Gore these days) and use them to buy votes with social programs.

Oh, and there was supposed

to also be a middle class tax cut. Never happened.

Now Gore is proposing more

"targeted" tax cuts, which we can safely assume will also never

happen, and I'm willing to bet that $100 billion he has pledged to spend

rearming the military will also never happen.

Which brings us to Bush's proposal

for across-the-board tax cuts.

I hate to say it, but Gore's

not exaggerating on this one. The richest Americans will get the biggest

cuts, because the richest Americans pay most of the taxes.

But think about what a tax

cut is for. Yes, it's nice to have a little more jingle in one's pockets,

but the main purpose of a tax cut is to get more money flowing into the

economy. And if you leave out the people who are paying the most, then

you're not going to have much new money flowing into the economy.

Gore did exaggerate a great

deal, however, when he pointed all around the room and said that any one

rich person will get more than everyone in the room combined. That was

more of the theatrical nonsense that we have come to expect from Gore.

One more thing. If you give

everyone an equal tax cut that is, the same percentage cut although rich

people will get a larger break in dollars, the percentage of the total

taxes that they pay will go up. Bush actually proposes to increase the

burden of the wealthy from 62 percent of the taxes to 64 percent.

One other benefit of tax cuts

is that they are morally right. They wouldn't be if our tax burden were

more reasonable. But we are paying half of our incomes in taxes.

Whether you're rich or whether

you're poor, that's too much.