Well, it may be July and we may be past the halfway mark in the presidential campaign season, but in this year of the issue drought I finally found something worth writing about.

In recent weeks, Bush and Gore have unveiled dueling Social Security proposals. Both say they ensure the solvency of the program for the next few decades -- Bush by allowing workers to invest a portion of their benefits and Gore by using rosy surplus numbers to pay down the national debt and reduce the federal government's annual raid on the Social Security trust fund.

Current projections give the trust fund another 37 years of solvency. Bush wants to allow the growth of interest on the privately invested portion of the fund to extend the availability of the direct federal subsidy indefinitely. Gore says he'll extend the existing funding process, guaranteed, to 2054.

See the issue yet? Forget the differences between the two plans, which is easy because these two candidates are mirror images of each other on too many important policies. (I know the private investment part of the Bush plan wigs out some liberals, but take a look, he's allowing an almost meaningless fraction of the benefit to be invested). Ask yourself WHY the plans are being proposed.

My father, who will be 53 next year, would be 90 when Social Security goes broke without the Bush/Gore plans. With the courageous intervention of Bush/Gore, my Dad's benefit will continue until he's 107. Now, Dad's in good health, but he can read an actuarial table and tell you that not many in his generation will be around in 2054. And I don't think the tables provide a specific life expectancy for the progeny of two chain-smoking coal mining Appalachian families. Message: My pop, God bless him, isn't going to see age 107. The story will be the same for the vast majority of those in his youth-worshipping baby boom generation, despite our best efforts to use technology to extend their lives.

So, there is virtually no difference between 2037 and 2054 if you are my Dad. Again, then, why the need for the new Bush/Gore proposals? Here's the math: Assuming a retirement age of 70 (yes, that's what the U.S. Treasury did to you in 1997 and never told you), the person retiring in the year 2037 is now age 33. That person, and all younger than he or she, under the current projections, will be arriving at the big Social Security party to find the cake eaten, the tap dry, all the cashews picked out of the nut bowl and only those horrendous round mint things remaining.

Under Bush/Gore 2000, the 33-year-old-or-younger worker will get solvency between ages 70 and 87. And that, my cynical, disillusioned media-saturated GenX cohort, is what Campaign 2000 means for you. Though the two candidates are offering mildly different proposals, both decided it was important to aim a public pension right at a generation that is notorious for failing to vote in non-Bill Clinton elections. The Social Security issue just went from being a World War II generation issue to being an MTV generation issue.

Do you suppose we'll notice?

John Hedgecoth finds it strangely reassuring that many Wal-Mart greeters are gainfully employed people in their 70s.