I"ve been a straight-ticket Republican voter for forty years. BUT!

No significant public officer is an individual. To say "I vote for (or against) the man" is bushwah. Any signficant public officer is a committee, a team, with large debts owing to other teams, with hopes of future support from certain sets of special interests. Whoever gets into the Oval Office is going to have to work with the team that put him there, and with the forces that put him there also put in Congress.

Despite what I said in the first paragraph, I expect to vote for Gore (and other Democrats) this time around. Why? Because I've been totally turned off by the actions of the Republican majority in Congress for the last eight years, and profoundly disturbed by the overwhelming influence the far right has achieved in the Republican party.

Dave Oesterreich