It seems as if each candidate is trying to outdo the other in portraying himself or herself as the only candidate who can and will bring real change to the presidency. Many of them point out the numerous polls that supposedly show us the majority of our citizens feel the country is going in the wrong direction. Seldom do these polls ask the respondents to quantify the nature of the wrong direction.

I know why they don't; the results they get will probably be unusable.

Furthermore, each candidate in the "I'm the changiest candidate you can get" race gets a bit dodgy when it comes to specifying why they are the candidate of change. It's easy to be against an unpopular war. It's easy to say there are too many people who don't have health-care coverage. It's easy to say the education system needs more money. It's easy to say the economy needs a shot in the arm to get going again.

The trouble with all these easy statements is they all play to a segment of the voting population and cannot be fixed during the next administration, no matter who wins.

The Washington "outsider" candidates are proclaiming how much they are going to change things and take away the "politics as usual" way of doing business. Does anyone in his or her right mind believe that's going to happen?

Politicians are, after all, politicians. And politicians do what they've always done. The cut deals with friends and with their opponents. When someone says they are going to cut out the influence of special interests, it really means they are going to replace the current special interests with others of their own choosing.

If we were looking for real change, I would expect a political candidate to say something like, "If I am elected, I'm going to introduce legislation to control the level of credit card debt in the country so we don't entice people into bankruptcy with easy credit. Credit card companies that don't follow the rules will pay exorbitant fines." Do you think we'll ever hear that?

Or perhaps another candidate might say he or she would be willing to guarantee the public education system a level of funding, but the education system has to get back to the real basics of education and eliminate all the superfluous programs devoted to social engineering. How would a candidate be received if he or she proposed a funding bonus to schools that produced graduates who became leading-edge performers in mathematics and the physical sciences?

Several candidates are proposing a universal health-care system where everyone has insurance. It's easy to say; but it's impossible to do without introducing the lumbering, inefficient, ineffective federal and state bureaucracies deeper and deeper into the fabric of our lives. The candidates point to the health-care models of Great Britain, Canada and other nations without admitting those systems are facing serious crises of their own. And now that everyone is predicting a recession, how can you pay for something this large without massive tax increases that take more money out of the hands of the people who actually earn it?

Has anyone figured out we don't have enough health-care professionals to serve all the people of the country as it stands today? Maybe the politicos could figure out how to make more doctors and fewer lawyers who make a living suing doctors. Now that would be a real change!

I had some health-care professionals in my family. Their malpractice insurance premiums alone were well above the poverty income level for a family of four. Is anyone willing to change that to make health care more affordable?

So, in my humble opinion, if you're looking for real change, don't expect it to come from the current candidates from either party. What you'll get is their version of change that will be far less satisfying than the "magic" of David Copperfield and his fellow illusionists.

Of course, if all you care about is the illusion of change, I expect you'll be really happy because Dubya will be out of office - which he will be, no matter what.

Well, that's what's been on my mind.