"Why is this election so close?" Al Gore asked when he addressed the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night. Gore's answer: "Well, I know something about close elections, so let me offer you my opinion. I believe this election is close because the forces of the status quo are desperately afraid of the change Barack Obama represents."

Gore may be right about 2008 and wrong about 2000. In 2000, it was Gore who represented the status quo. A very good status quo, actually. Just before that election, nearly 80 percent of Americans said they thought things were going well in the country, according to the Time/CNN poll.

George W. Bush was the change candidate in 2000. How did Bush win the election if voters were so happy? Well, of course, he didn't. Gore got 540,000 more votes than Bush. He just got them in the wrong places. Voters in 2000 were on the knife's edge when it came to change. They wanted to continue the peace and prosperity the country was enjoying under President Clinton, but under a leader who could offer better character.

This year the market for change is overwhelming. The number of Americans who think that things are going well in the country: 31 percent, in a CNN/Opinion Research poll. More than two-thirds disapprove of President Bush. Three-quarters say that the economy's bad. Two thirds oppose the war in Iraq.

Imagine what this race would look like if Bush were running for re-election. Or if Vice President Cheney were running to succeed him.

But they're not. John McCain is.

Same thing, Obama says. "Next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third," Obama said in his acceptance speech. "We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On November 4, we must stand up and say, 'Eight is enough.'"

Not the same thing, McCain says. "There are issues that I have agreed with the president on, and there are issues that I have disagreed on," McCain said in July. So which is it? The voters are not sure. Last week's CNN poll asked, "If John McCain were elected president in November, do you think he would mostly carry out the policies of George W. Bush or mostly have policies that are different?" Fifty percent said that McCain's policies would be mostly the same, and 49 percent said that they would be mostly different.

Take voters who think that things are going badly in the country but also believe that McCain's policies would be different from Bush's. Which way do they go? For McCain, by better than 2-to-1 (61 percent to 28 percent). That's why the election is close.

Both candidates are trying to seize the change issue. In Obama's case, the fact that he is African-American may give him an advantage. It makes him a genuine outsider. Nothing would capture the change issue more dramatically than electing the first African-American president of the United States. The question is the one that Gore raised -- whether Obama represents too much change.

McCain is making his own claim to the change issue. Women, too, are seen as political outsiders. Remember 1992, another year when the change issue was hot? That year, 35 percent of Americans thought that things were going well in the country, about the same as now. That was also the "Year of the Woman," with 24 new female members elected to the House and five to the Senate, the largest increase in history. Now McCain has named a woman to his ticket. His expectation: The pick will enable him to capture the change issue, but without too much change.

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