Six and a half years after Bill Clinton won the presidency, the fine art of triangulation has become de rigueur for candidates of both parties. If you can neutralize your party's radical wing and co-opt the issues of your opponents, Valhalla awaits. This tendency produces Republicans who sound like Democrats and vice versa. As evidence we offer the speech excerpts below. Some come from the stump speeches of Clinton heir apparent Al Gore; others come from the campaign juggernaut of George W. Bush. Which is which?

1) [The American] dream is so vivid -- but too many say: The dream is not for me. Kids who turn schoolyards into battlefields. Children who corrupt their wills and souls with drugs, who limit their ambitions by having children themselves. Failed schools are creating two societies: one that reads and one that can't; one that dreams and one that doesn't. These are the burdens on the conscience of a successful nation. The next president must close this gap of hope. It is the great challenge to America's good heart ... I will be an activist president, who sets goals worthy of a great nation.

2) Government can help. We can pass laws to give schools and principals more authority to discipline children and protect the peace of classrooms. We must encourage states to reform their juvenile justice laws. We must say to our children, "We love you, but discipline and love go hand in hand, and there will be bad consequences for bad behavior."

3) I ask for your help to strengthen family life in America. And I make you this pledge: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will marshal its authority, its resources and its moral leadership to fight for America's families. With your help, I will take my own values of faith and family to the presidency -- to build an America that is not only better off, but better.

4) These are our deficits now: the time deficit in family life; the decency deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our elderly parents. Our families are loving but over-stretched. These deficits cannot be measured in monthly economic tables, or even in the size of a family's paycheck. To find them, you have to look harder at the places our statistics do not describe: the dinner tables that sit empty, when working parents do not have the time to share a meal with their children. The entertainment that glorifies aggression and indecency, with lessons more vivid and overpowering than those in the classroom. The schools where discipline is eroding -- and the school hallways where guns and fear are becoming too common.

5) I will involve [people] in after-school programs, maternity group homes, drug treatment, prison ministries. I will lay out specific incentives to encourage an outpouring of giving in America.

6) There is a hunger and thirst for goodness among us. Just visible within a generation's journey is a new horizon: a 21st century America with stronger families, stronger communities and a more vital democracy -- in which we live and govern according to our highest American ideals.

7) We'll be prosperous if we embrace free trade. I'll work to end tariffs and break down barriers everywhere, entirely, so the whole world trades in freedom. The fearful build walls. The confident demolish them. I am confident in American workers and farmers and producers. And I am confident that America's best is the best in the world.

8) Responsible men and women must make their own most personal decisions based on their own consciences, not government interference. No executive action can mend a broken family. No legislation can reconnect a parent to a child, or a family to a grandparent. No proposal can change a culture that does not place family life at the top of our hierarchy of values, where it belongs. So today, I say to every parent in America: It is our own lives we must master if we are to have the moral authority to guide our children. The ultimate outcome does not rest in the hands of any president, but with all our people taking responsibility for themselves, and for each other. So my first promise is to ask you, each of you, to fulfill that American promise.

9) Sin accisn, las palabras no valen nada -- aunque sean bonitas. Mis amigos, seguiremos, trabajando juntos, mano a mano, para el futuro de nuestras familias y nuestros niqos.

1) Bush

2) Bush

3) Gore

4) Gore

5) Bush

6) Gore

7) Bush

8) Gore

9) Gore