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It's always difficult to sort through the countless claims, accusations, and clarifications of a campaign season to find a presidential candidate's real positions. In 2008, it seems even tougher than ever. With John McCain, the problem is the gap between his moderate, sometimes maverick voting record in the Senate in recent years and his more-conservative rhetoric on the stump. With Barack Obama, the problem is the striking brevity of his voting record--less than four years in federal office--in contrast to the vast scope of his soaring promises.

So this summer, National Journal published a series of articles analyzing the candidates' stands on 10 key issues ranging from Iraq to immigration. The full series is available at NationalJournal.com. What follows are condensed briefings on each of the topics that boil down not only the candidates' stated policy positions but also their Senate votes, the key interest groups that influence their approach, and their teams of top advisers.

For McCain, this context puts something of an asterisk next to positions he has articulated while courting the Republican base. Sure, McCain has pledged to extend President Bush's tax cuts, now set to expire in 2010. But since he voted against the same cuts in 2001 and 2003, how hard would he actually fight for them against a Democratic Congress? And sure, McCain as a candidate talks up border fences and mass deportations of the estimated 2 million illegal immigrants who have criminal records. But as president, might he be more open to immigration, just as he was willing to work with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in 2005-06 on what conservatives denounced as an "amnesty" bill?

For Obama, the analysis reveals that the self-declared candidate of "change" harbors some old-school liberal instincts. Gas prices too high? Tax oil companies. Greenhouse gases warming the planet? Impose federal mandates. Too many Americans uninsured? Federal mandates again. Obama even wants to re-examine whether gay Americans should serve openly in the military, the issue that burned President Clinton so badly during his first year in office.

Meanwhile, McCain's campaign positions on those same issues are classically conservative, even though he bucks GOP orthodoxy at times. On everything from energy to education, McCain has consistently called for less federal interference and more room for state, local, and private-sector initiative.

That said, the two candidates' positions also bear some striking similarities. Who would have thought five years ago that the Republican nominee would acknowledge global warming as a genuine issue or would make worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons a long-term goal? Who would have thought that the Democrat would want to add 92,000 troops to the U.S. military?

On many issues, reality pushes the candidates closer together than their rhetoric suggests. McCain may want to keep Bush's tax cuts intact, but he will not be able to ignore the rising budget deficit. Obama may want to trim the tax cuts, but he dare not overturn them entirely, and indeed has proposed new cuts for the middle class.

The starkest divide between Obama and McCain has been on whether to "surge" more U.S. forces into Iraq to try to prevail there, or to withdraw from an unwinnable war. But changes on the ground have forced both candidates to moderate their positions. Obama cannot deny that the surge--along with a new U.S. strategy and self-defeating errors by Al Qaeda--has led to real gains in Iraq that a hasty withdrawal might jeopardize. McCain cannot deny that the Iraqi government has explicitly asked the United States not only to withdraw but also to provide the timeline he had long rejected.

Whichever man wins in November will face the same set of problems--and the same constraints on his ability to solve them in an era of recession, rising deficits, and a military worn out by seven years of war. Within the room they have to maneuver, though, Obama tacks left and McCain tacks right. There is a real difference between the candidates this year, and a real choice before the American people. The pages that follow lay out that choice.