But the vast majority of the Skiles' tax savings under Bush -- $2,000 of the $3,000 -- comes because they have four children -- Allisyn, 8; Andrew, 11; Amanda 13; and Ashley, 14 -- and Bush's plan doubles the per-child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 per child.

Families with four children, however, represent only 7 percent of all families with children and about 2 percent of American households.

Even more significant is that the Bush campaign made sure to select a family in which all four children are within an age range that makes Gore's "targeted" tax cuts irrelevant to their circumstances today.

If they had a child under the age of 1, stay-at-home mom Vicki Skiles would receive a $500 tax credit -- but the Bush campaign weeded out all families with kids under 1. If they earned under $60,000 and wanted to enroll younger children in day care, they'd be eligible for an expanded day-care tax credit.

If Amanda and Ashley were enrolled in an after-school program, the Skiles family would be eligible for Gore's 20 percent tax credit for kids from 12 to 16 in after-school programs. If the programs cost $4,800 a year, the family could deduct $960 from their taxes.

Just as the Bush campaign made sure not to pick a family with kids young enough to be eligible for any of Gore's tax credit expansions for kids in their early years, so too did the Bushies pick a family without kids in college who would be eligible for Gore's tuition tax credit. When Ashley heads off to college in September 2004, for instance, her parents would be eligible, under Gore's plan, to either make a $10,000 deduction off their income for tuition, or take a 28 percent tax credit, which the Gore plan increases from the current 20 percent credit.

Since Mark Skiles makes $85,000 a year, he is within the $80,000 to $100,000 income bracket wherein the current 20 percent college tuition tax credit is phased out. But the Gore plan ups the phaseout bracket to the $100,000 to $120,000 range, so he would be eligible.

Having nothing to do with the Skiles brood, there are other significant differences between the Gore and Bush tax plans that can skew either way. The current "marriage penalty," for instance, takes two single people, each taking the standard tax deduction of $4,550, and screws them when they get hitched, reducing their deduction to $7,600 per couple. Both Gore and Bush would get rid of this bit of unfairmess.

Gore's plan would simply allow the same individual standard deduction rate to stand, letting couples deduct $9,100 total. Bush would add to the current $7,600 deduction, letting the couple deduct 10 percet of the lower wage-earner's salary to a maximum of $3,000. So under Bush, some families -- those in the higher income brackets -- will be able to deduct $10,600, certainly more than the $9,100 they'd get under Gore. Conversely, those on the lower end of the middle class would get to deduct less under Bush than under Gore. It's a mixed bag.

One thing, however, is pretty clear. There are two tax families that Bush has yet to trot out would certainly get a big tax cut under Bush and "not one dime" under Gore. They are the Bush family of Austin, Texas, who would save about $50,000 under his plan, and the Cheney family of Jasper, Wyo., who'd get about $270,000. (That's based on their 1999 tax returns). That doesn't include what they'd save from Bush's proposed elimination of the tax on estates worth more than $675,000.

"It's a big difference between us," Cheney said in his debate exchange with Lieberman. "They like tax credits, we like tax reform and tax cuts." It's not tough to figure out why.

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