In the midst of a stem-winder of a stump speech, Gov. George W. Bush calls for Iowans Mark and Vicki Skiles to stand.

They pay $8,220 in federal taxes, Bush says. Under his plan the couple will save $3,000 a year. There are cheers.

You know how much they'll save under Gore's plan? Bush asks.

"Not one dime!" he cries.

And the crowd boos.

He performs this bit of theater everywhere he goes, from sea to shining sea. In the midst of almost every one of his rallies, Bush looks down at his notecard and calls for one of these "tax families" to stand, to illustrate the point that his plan will better benefit the working men and women than the "targeted" tax cuts of Vice President Al Gore.

There are many requirements to be a Bush campaign "tax family": no kids in day care or college or under the age of one, no sick parents or children at home, no one at night school and an income roughly between $35,000 and $70,000. A Washington Post story from early September reported that the Bush campaign's requirements for its "tax families" effectively eliminated 85 percent of the population in that income bracket.

One of the Bush campaign's most reliable qualities is its determination, however, which you can be forgiven for interpreting as shamelessness. The Bush campaign doesn't seem to care how unrepresentative its tax families are, how fundamentally deceptive Bush is therefore being when he introduces each one to America. Wednesday night's rally, in the Bill Coldiron Fieldhouse in West Des Moines, is no exception.

Probe deeper into the circumstances of the Skiles family, and it becomes clear that not only is the brood demographically atypical, but the charge that under Gore's plan they'll save "not one dime" is false on its face.

Gore's plan will match $1 for every $3 Mark and Vicki save for retirement, for instance, up to a maximum of a $1,000 tax credit. Since Mark and Vicki save approximately $6,500 a year for retirement and education, right there they'll have a $1,000 tax credit, precisely 10,000 "dimes."

The Bush campaign rebuts this with complete disingenuousness, arguing that the tax credit isn't a tax cut. "In reality, it's new spending," says the Skiles fact sheet, which the Bush campaign does not exactly make handy and available. It is the only time I've ever heard a Republican refuse to categorize a tax credit as a tax cut. Sen. William Roth, R-Del., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee would certainly disagree with Bush's pooh-poohing of the tax credit.

Even acknowledging that the Skiles family will get a $1,000 tax credit from Gore, however, the larger point -- that the Skiles will pay less in taxes under Bush than under Gore -- is true. And it gets to a fundamental weakness in the Gore campaign's tax plan, which is how complicated it is, how easily it plays into the hands of the GOP's portrait of the Democratic Party as one that wants to let the federal government run your life.

Indeed, the Bush tax plan is so simple, so easily comprehended, that even Bush himself can explain it.

Not so with their opponents. "You have to be a CPA to understand what he just said," joked Bush's running mate, former defense secretary Dick Cheney, during the vice presidential debate against Gore's No. 2, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. "The fact of the matter is, the plan is so complex that ordinary Americans are never going to ever figure out what they even qualify for. It's a classic example of wanting to have a program, in this case a tax program, that will in fact direct people to live their lives in certain ways rather than empowering them to make decisions for themselves."

That's one way to look at it, certainly. Another is that the Gore-Lieberman plan provides help specifically in areas where families earning less than $100,000 a year -- 90 percent of the American people -- need a little extra help. Both the Bush and Gore plans provide about $500 billion for these families, but Gore likes to point out that Bush provides another trillion in tax cuts for those who earn more than $100,000.

Regardless of where you come down on the two plans -- and certainly Bush seems to have won the philosphical debate on this issue, at the very least -- the Bush campaign's use of carefully screened families is, in a larger demographic context, dishonest. Take this slice of Americana: Mark Skiles, raised in Taiwan by his missionary parents, is a computer consultant who brings home about $85,000 a year. His wife, Vicki, is a homemaker who home-schools their four children. They are in the top 20 percent of the income bracket.

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