He didn’t say anything for a while.

Lucy and Sophie, our two Yellow Labs, sniffed him up, decided he wasn’t edible and wandered off to shampoo themselves in fresh cow flops. The results of good breeding always amaze me.

“Ever live out here?” I asked.

“Nope. Big cities. Honolulu. New York, Boston, Chicago.”

“Aren’t too many Obamas in Blue Grass,” I admitted. “Baracks are scarce, too. You’d get a nickname pretty fast. Something like Goose or Tater.”

“How about Bub?”

“There we go,” I said.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the truck’s tool rack.

“It’s a splitting maul. Eight pounds. Plastic handle. Made in Taiwan.”

“What are those?”

“Protective chaps. Husqvarna. Swedish.”

“That?”

“Stihl chainsaw. German outfit with a plant in Virginia Beach.”

“Gloves?”

“China.”

“That funny-looking axe thing?
“Now that’s a tie-pick. A local farmer in his 80s made them from scratch. He passed away recently. Hickory handle. Had his own blacksmith shop. The metal head has a point that you sink into a stick which you can lift into the truck without bending over.”

“Clever. Local crafts are good,” he said. “Folk art.”

“Can’t run a community economy on limberjacks and whimmy-diddles.”

“America has gotta make stuff again,” he said. “Good stuff. Not junk. Manufacturing helps everybody, up and down the income scale. We need to get plants back into the cities, the Rustbelt and the small towns that have been abandoned. Maybe the way to do that is to give really big tax breaks to businesses that set up in these orphan areas.”

“Know anything about farming?” I asked.

“‘There was a farmer who had a dog, and Bingo was his name-O.’ My kids taught it to me.”

“It’s a start.”

“Maybe we’ll put a little garden in at the White House. Do the work ourselves.”

“Good metaphor…also good for you. Don’t make a big deal about it. Don’t staff out the weeding.”

“I’ve met a lot of farmers,” he said. “I want to help the little guys stay in it. They seem to be efficient, but the money squeeze kills them. When they quit, the small towns die.”

He stopped and then leaned on the tailgate with his foot on the bumper. He bummed a Lucky out of my pack. I couldn’t tell whether he inhaled. “Michelle’s on my case,” he said as he waved it around, unlit. “Girl knows everything.”

“I take it you’re here because you want to touch base with the grass roots?”

“Wisdom comes up from the bottom of the barrel. So what do I do now?” he asked.

“Don’t listen to people who want to give you advice.”

He laughed. “Seriously.”

“I am. Your win was largely self-made and independent. Keep tacking toward what’s best for the general interest, not the narrowest interests of your political allies. Governing has become largely about who gets how much money and who gets to keep how much. Change that, and you’ve really done something.”

“What does rural America want?”

“More money. Jobs. Lower taxes. Subsidies. Loopholes. Pork. Less hardship. More security. Health care. Retirement. Easier lives. Peace. Pride. We’re just like everyone else.”

“So you’re saying don’t do anything special for farmers and rural communities?”

“No. I’m saying do things out here only when they make sense for everybody. If, for instance, you look at corn-based ethanol objectively and decide that America, as a whole, benefits from this industry, use federal resources to nudge it along. But if your research shows that it’s not a good deal, then back off. Same with clean-coal energy, nuclear power, crop subsidies, farm taxes and everything else.”

“It’s a simple principle,” he said.

“But hard to practice.”

“What should I do about rural policy?”

“We have no rural policy. We have no policy, because we don’t ask deep questions. Is it in the country’s best interest to have more of us live on farms and in rural areas or not, and why? Are we, as a country, better served by cheap food or more expensive food, by cheap energy or more expensive energy, by more land devoted to agriculture and timber or less, by using our natural resources right now or husbanding them for the long term? Answer those kinds of questions, and policies drop into place. Duck them, and you continue mish-mashing around.”

“I’m getting positions papers from everybody. Academics, trade groups, lobbyists….”

“I bet you are! You’re seen as the biggest piñata since Lyndon Johnson.”

“I know. But I’m not. I’m going to do it different. I’m going to cut spending where I can so that I can cut taxes responsibly. I’m thinking about cutting tax rates on business and give breaks on domestic investment. Maybe cut the capital-gains rate in half for two years, see if it helps. I’d like to cushion the losses too. Business creates jobs, which creates income, which is what we need.”

We finished. He wiped his brow.

“Sweat happens,” he laughed. “Well, time to get back.”

“Come again, Bub.”

We sat at my kitchen table. They came dressed for farm work, both in new bib overalls and ironed flannel shirts.

Me: Senator Obama, say some good things about Senator McCain.

Obama: Well, let’s be clear. For a man his age and considering the dreadful things he’s been through over many decades, like skin cancer and five years of torture, yes, for a man his age, I think he’s doing okay. I hope I’m as chipper at 72.

Me: Senator McCain, same question about Senator Obama.

McCain: That one gives a great speech, which he learned how to do at those Ivy League schools that Bill Ayers and other terrorists might have attended while they were making bombs. I dropped bombs on Hanoi, but I sure didn’t make them in my college dormitory room. Senator Obama has yet to deny that he associated with all the terrorists, socialists and Woodstockists that he could have associated with back then. America doesn’t know the real Barack Obama, and neither do I.

Obama: Well, several things. First, I was eight years old when Bill Ayers was doing acts that both Senator McCain and I deplore.

McCain: Don’t you dare associate with me after associating with that other one! My friends, that is radical, left-wing McCarthyism. And so, Senator: What exactly were YOU doing in 1968 when your pals in the Weather Underground were cherry-bombing Congressional toilets? You used to call yourself, “Barry.” Was that your underground handle? Weren’t you in the Manson family? Did you or did you not help kidnap Patty Hearst? There are a lot of questions that Senator Obama has yet to answer about what he’s not done. Did you smoke heroin at Woodstock? Did you help sink the Maine? Just how many whites did your father kill when he was a Mau-Mau in Kenya? And wasn’t your mother a liberal? Did you fire on Texas-Americans at the Alamo? Why did you marry a woman who is too tall to be in the American mainstream? If you’re so good, why can’t you dunk?

Obama: I confess to everything.

McCain: Not fair. You can’t make these questions disappear by being agreeable.

Me: Fellas, let’s talk taxes.

Obama: I’ll tax the rich, and cut taxes for everyone else.

McCain: Tax-terrorist! This is class war on my wife. My friends, I promise not to tax anybody’s income, anything, anymore.

Me: How will you raise money for the military, the $700 billion bailout, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

McCain: I have a three-point plan. First, I’ll secure the borders by charging a $100,000 tax-deductible entrance fee for every legal immigrant, and $200,000 on every illegal one who we don’t catch. Second, I’ll put a sales tax on 1960s memorabilia, especially those posters that made me dizzy. Finally, I’ll send out Marine recruiters to sign up volunteer taxpayers.

Obama: I’m speechless.

McCain: That’s a first. I will stop federal spending. No more pork, no more chicken in every pot, no more earmarks for Alaska. The way we get to a good society is to stop spending on it. You don’t improve education by throwing federal tax dollars at teachers and schools.

Obama: Taxpayers paid for your college education. They pay for your health care, for your retirement, for much of your financial security.

McCain: So what’s your point?

Obama: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

McCain: I’m for all babies. I’m for Joe the Baby. I’m also for bathing.

Obama: I prefer showers.

McCain: Elitist snob! I’ll make the federal budget so thin, that it’ll be skinnier than…my wife.

Obama: My wife is skinnier than yours. Look at her legs.

McCain: My wife’s the skinniest. Look at her bogus.

Obama: My wife’s smarter.

McCain: My wife has capital gains.

Obama: My wife’s meaner.

McCain: You don’t have a clue. Anyway, my wife is…blond. I win.

Obama: My wife isn’t. I win.

Me: Fellas….?

(They stopped. No one said anything for a while. They looked at each other, maybe for the first time.)

McCain: You know, we can do better than this.

Obama: You’re right, John. We can.

McCain: So why don’t we?

Obama: We both promise change, and yet we’re both afraid to.

(They laugh.)

McCain: It’s so easy to pin tales on a donkey, so to speak.

Obama: And we always know what elephants leave behind.

McCain: We insult the voters

Obama: …and they cheer us.

McCain: Promises we can’t keep.

Obama: Promises we shouldn’t keep.

McCain: Still, every once in a while we elect someone who is up to the job.

Obama: Who doesn’t disgrace it.

McCain: Who changes the way the country goes and does

Obama: …for the better.

McCain: However this election turns out…

Obama: …let’s find some common ground.

McCain: …and move in a different direction.

Me: Gentlemen. To the fields! We have work to do.

I’m not sure reliable answers are available. Campaign promises are preferences, not contractual obligations. Circumstances — the economy, control of Congress, competing demands — will shape what either wants to do as President as well as what is feasible. But mostly neither has said.

On fiscal policy, they share some positions. Both appear to like balanced budgets, pay as you go and deficit reduction, but both have proposed policy packages that would increase the national debt—McCain more than Obama.

Both urge tax cuts and spending as part of a post-election stimulus package now being worked up in Washington, but with different components and orientations.

McCain now supports continuing the Bush tax cuts that he opposed when they were enacted. Obama supports tax cuts for the majority of taxpayers and tax increases for the top five percent.

The tax positions that both candidates have taken in their stump speeches differ from the positions their campaign staffs and economic advisers advance.

Obama’s stump-speech position indicates a policy that would generate an increase in after-tax income in 2009 for the bottom four quintiles, something less than six percent for the lowest 20 percent to something less than two percent for the fourth quintile. The top quintile in Obama’s stump speech shows a drop in after-tax income of more than two percent. His stump-speech policies would lower after-tax income for the top one percent by about 9 percent and the top 0.10 percent by about 11 percent.

Obama’s staff and advisers, however, say that his policies will raise after-tax income for every quintile, from a little more than six percent at the bottom to about two percent for the top quintile. Their positions show a drop in after-tax income of about one percent for the top one percent and about three percent for the top 0.10 percent.

McCain’s stump speech also differs from his staff positions.

McCain’s speech shows all quintiles gaining in after-tax income, from less than one percent in the bottom quintile to six percent in the top quintile. His stump speech shows the top one percent would gain more than eight percent after tax and the top 0.10 percent would gain almost ten percent after tax.

His staff position follows the same trend, but it shows a larger increase in after-tax income in all quintiles than his stump speech, with the top one percent getting an almost ten percent gain and the top 0.10 percent almost 12 percent.

These positions are compared in detail at www.taxpolicycenter.org. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center finds that both tax plans would substantially increase the national debt over the next ten years—McCain by $5 trillion, Obama by $3.5 trillion. McCain would reduce taxes by nearly $4.2 trillion, and Obama by $2.9 trillion. While each spreads the tax burden differently, the general ideas of McCain and Obama would raise about the same amount of revenue.

Politicians change some of their positions over time as circumstances change. That’s not flip-flopping, saying one thing here and another there. It’s adapting.

Comparing the tax positions of McCain and Obama is somewhat unfair to McCain because he’s been voting on national tax policy six times longer than Obama—in economic conditions that have changed significantly.

McCain opposed President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001, one of two Senate Republicans to do so. He said at the time: “I can’t in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.” McCain also opposed the $350 billion Bush tax cuts in 2003. For those positions, Grover Norquist, the conservative anti-tax advocate, called McCain a “tax-increasing Bolshevik.”

In the 2008 campaign, McCain advocates making both Bush tax cuts permanent and proposes additional cuts. Norquist now endorses McCain.

In the third debate with Obama, McCain said: “So let’s not raise anybody’s taxes, my friends, and make it be very clear to you I am not in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy.” Both McCain’s stump speech and advisers advocate tax cuts for everybody, including the wealthy.

McCain supported the recent $700 billion Wall Street rescue, as did Obama, but McCain’s position this spring was that “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.” (George F. Will, “McCain’s Housing Restraint,” Washington Post, April 6, 2008.) Of the two, Obama has been more consistent on taxes and spending over the last year or so.

Tax breaks benefit some groups at the expense of others who make up the difference.

The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation in September, 2007 projected the cost of “federal tax expenditures” (tax breaks) for fiscal years 2007-2011.

The Big Three homeowner breaks are: 1) the deduction for mortgage interest on an owner-occupied residence was projected to cost $79.9 billion in 2008; 2) the deduction for property taxes on owner-occupied residences, $14.3 billion; and 3) exclusion of capital gains on the sale of owner-occupied residences, $29.0 billion. (http://www.house.gov/jct/s-3-07.pdf.)

Together, The Big Three came to an estimated $119 billion in 2007, and the Joint Committee projected them to grow to about $164 billion in 2011. McCain said that the “mortgage interest deduction should be left alone; it’s embedded in the U.S. tax code.” (Realtor Magazine, September, 2008, http://www.realtor.org.)

Both candidates appear to favor keeping all three “as is,” though information is sparse on the deductibility of property tax and the capital-gains exclusion.

The Big Three only benefit those who itemize deductions. Itemization increases significantly as income rises. McCain is against a mortgage tax credit for families who don’t itemize. Obama favors a ten percent “universal” mortgage credit for non-itemizers.

These deductions help many Americans. Bruce Hahn, President of the American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance, told me: “The mortgage-interest and real-estate tax deductions and the home-sale capital-gains exclusion encourage home ownership, which contribute to social stability and the accumulation of home equity, the biggest source of retirement savings for most Americans. Existing ceilings…and other limitations…

prevent these worthy deductions from disproportionately benefiting the rich.”

Critics argue The Big Three are regressive, inequitable, inefficient and expensive. William G. Gale, et al., “Encouraging Homeownership Through the Tax Code,” Tax Notes, June 18, 2007. (http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/10001084_Encouraging_Homeownership.pdf.)

Here are some property-related tax issues for comparison.

Capital-gains rates. McCain wants to keep “as is” current long-term, capital-gains rates, with a top hit of 15 percent. But as part of his stimulus package, he proposed last week to cut this top rate to 7.5 percent for 2009-2010, at cost of about $10 billion. (http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/15/news/economy/capital_gains?postversion=2008101516) The Tax Policy Center estimates that two-thirds of the benefit of halving the top capital-gains rate will go to those making $1 million or more in 2009; those making less than $50,000 would likely get nothing.

Obama wants to retain current capital-gains rates for families with incomes below $250,000 and increase the top rate to 20 percent for the top two income brackets. That would be 20 percent for a couple making more than $250,000 and a single filer with more than $200,000. He favors requiring information reporting of tax basis for gains.

In current circumstances, both candidates might consider tax changes on losses as well as gains.

Estate tax. McCain wants to make permanent a $5-million- per-individual, $10-million exemption per couple with a 15-percent top rate on estates exceeding that amount. Obama wants to cap the exemption at $3.5 million per individual, $7 million per couple with a 45-percent top rate—the 2009 rules. Both favor “portability,” which essentially doubles the exemption amount for the surviving spouse.

Most estates would escape federal taxation under either policy, as they do now. Tax-planning tools are available to protect estates that exceed the exemption, in whole or part depending on their size.

Neither candidate favors either reversion to the pre-2001 rules in 2011 or full repeal, which would cost about $522 billion in lost federal revenue over the next ten years.

Farm aid. McCain opposed the 2008 farm bill; Obama supported it. McCain described it as “a $300 billion, bloated, pork-laden bill” and opposed ethanol subsidies. Obama supported this subsidy. (Candidate answers to American Farm Bureau questions are at www.fb.org, FB News, September 22, 2008, “Election 2008.”) McCain has said: “I don’t support agricultural subsidies no matter where they are.”

Neither campaign responded to inquiries. So voters might ask: Would you continue present tax policies or change them –and, if so, how — on the following:

• deductibility of mortgage interest on second home
• deductibility of property taxes
• capital-gains exclusion on the sale of owner-occupied residence; second home
• residency requirement to qualify for capital-gains exclusion on residence
• reduce the holding period required to qualify for capital-gains treatment
• 1031 exchange rules
• deductibility of donated conservation-easement value
• second-home rules—personal use, deductions
• hobby-farm rules
• taxability of various agricultural/conservation, cost-share programs
• farm taxes–expensing and depreciation rules for farm/land equipment and improvements, among many other issues
• increasing the number of tax brackets to promote fairness and compliance
• timber taxation for small landowners
• treatment of rental income
• expensing and depreciation schedules
• self-employment and home-office rules
• passive-activity loss rules and carry-over loss rules

Tax rules and policies like these are the realm of “special interests,” which both McCain and Obama deplore. Each American, of course, is a bundle of special interests, even Joe, the Plumber.

Presidents define where a special interest intersects with the public interest. If the candidates believe that both individuals and society benefit from widespread property ownership, then policies and tax rules can be established that encourage it. Tax policies can make it easier or harder to buy, maintain, hold, sell and profit from property.

My little excursion into these dark, swirling waters left me wondering which direction each candidate would row…and whether they would use one oar or two.

Candidate issue positions are not promissory notes. They’re more like inclinations, subject to whatever. Still, they suggest the direction in which a candidate prefers to fall.

First, however, I looked into what property each candidate owns.

Senator McCain, in a sense, “owns” the most real estate, which fell in his lap because he married a beer distributor’s daughter who took over the business and has money to invest. Mrs. McCain or her trusts own their real estate, which includes at least seven properties. Mrs. McCain bought three Phoenix condos and two in San Diego for $11 million over the last four years.

Newsweek recently disclosed that Mrs. McCain failed to pay property taxes for four years on her La Jolla, Calif., condo where an elderly aunt lives. The back taxes were paid last week. This seems to be nothing more than a failure to receive the bill.

The McCains’ principal residence is a two-story, 8,500-square-foot condo complex in Phoenix, purchased in 2006 and 2007 for about $5.5 million. When in Washington, the McCains live in a 2,100-square-foot condo purchased for $375,000 in 1993. They also own a 6.5-acre, river-front house in Sedona, Az. (Christina S. N. Lewis, “From Their House to the White House,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2008.)

The evidence is that Mrs. McCain knows how to make money and invest in real estate. I could find no evidence that her husband shares her interest or savvy.

The Obamas paid $1.65 million in 2005 for a three-story, 6,500-square-foot Georgian house across the street from a synagogue in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. They had owned a 2,200-square-foot condo since 1993, which they purchased for $277,500 and sold for $415,000. Money to buy the house came mainly from royalties the Senator earned for Dreams From My Father, his memoir. Neither the Senator nor his wife has any family money.

The Senator has denied that he did anything wrong when he bought this house for 15 percent off the asking price as his friend, real-estate developer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, bought an adjoining lot on the same day for full price. Later, the Obamas bought a strip of this lot from Rezko for $100,000. The house price was in line with comparable properties. No evidence has surfaced that the Senator has been involved with Rezko’s legal problems.

It looks to me as if Rezko knowingly helped the Obamas and the Obamas knowingly took his help—but there’s nothing illegal about any of that.

Neither Senator invests in real estate.

Neither has ever run a business or led a public agency. They’ve both been legislators.

They can be compared, however, in the organization of their campaigns and how they are managing this type of large, expensive and complex enterprise.

Senator McCain, who started as the favorite, survived a near-collapse last summer when his campaign almost ran out of money. He salvaged what he could, cut staff and expenses and improvised.

Yesterday, the Senator scrambled his campaign staff again, investing Steve Schmidt, a Cheney aide and the third political trail boss in a year to try to herd him into the White House, with “full operational control.” (Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear, “McCain Puts New Strategist Atop Campaign,” Washington Post, July 3, 2008.)

None of Senator McCain’s opponents had run in a presidential primary before, and their inexperience and weaknesses helped him survive. The Senator seems to be good at winging it; not so good as a manager in an organization implementing a plan.

Senator Obama used his grass-roots organizing experience to build voter support and win delegates. He worked the Internet to raise money better than any candidate in either party.

He won against a field of older and often more knowledgeable candidates who had better credentials and started in stronger positions. His campaign was better conceived, and he organized voters more effectively than his opponents. His rhetoric was fresh; he had style.

Since the end of WWII, America has elected only three Presidents with significant international, executive experience—Eisenhower, Nixon and George H.W. Bush. Senator Obama is the least experienced of any person who has either run for or was elected to the White House during these six decades. Yet, judged on his year-long campaign, he seems more methodical and better at getting things done than most of these predecessors.

Senator McCain’s individualism and temperament seem better suited to Senate dogfights where he’s done more than his opponent. Senator Obama’s skills seem better suited to executive management.

Neither Senators McCain nor Obama knows anything first hand about rural-land issues, farming or land-related environmental questions.

If primary voters had wanted country, Senator Clinton was available. She emerged wet but not drowned from Whitewater, a disastrous vacation-home development that soaked her and various associates for 20 years. And she did parlay $1,000 into $100,000 trading cattle futures in the late 1970s, back when a hoof was a hoof.

Neither Senators McCain nor Obama can match Senator Clinton’s experience with land and cattle.

Senator McCain wants to:

• open foreign markets to American farmers;
• advocate fair trade from other countries and reduce trade barriers;
• support a risk-management program for farmers that includes enacting “reasonable reforms to our crop insurance program and our system of countercyclical and direct payments”;
• focus farm policy on those with clear need–small farmers and rural communities;
• oppose subsidies to large commercial farms and cap subsidies to farmers whose adjusted gross income exceeds $250,000;
• support a 21st Century green revolution–growing better crops using less land and resources; promote conservation of America’s farmlands;
• restore rural prosperity and improve quality of rural life by lowering taxes and strengthening markets;
• fully fund food and nutrition programs; and
• oppose corn-based ethanol, subsidies to ethanol and the 2007 law that requires fuel marketers to blend 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol into U.S. fuel supply by 2015.

Senator Obama wants to:

• limit farm payments to $250,000 so as to “help family farmers, not large corporate agribusiness” and prohibit mega farms from dividing operations toget around payment caps;
• maintain our export competitiveness by breaking down trade and investment barriers;
• enact a “packer ban,” which would prohibit meatpackers from owning livestock;
• regulate pollution more strictly from feedlots and confined livestock operations;
• reinstate cap on the size of the livestock operation that can receive funding under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), so that the largest polluters pay for their own clean up;
• require country-of-origin labeling;
• encourage organic and local agriculture;
• assist young people to become farmers;
• provide capital-gains tax break for landowners who sell to beginning family farmers;
• make permanent farm disaster-assistance program;
• increase incentives for landowners to conduct sustainable agriculture andprotect wetlands, grasslands and forests;
• put an “unprecedented level of emphasis” on the conservation of private lands;
• support rural small-business development, such as farm-based, value-added enterprises and farmer-owned processing plants;
• continue payment in lieu of taxes on federal lands;
• provide incentives to forest owners, farmers and ranchers to promote carbon sequestration through tree planting, grassland restoration and no-till farming;
• improve rural communication networks, like broadband;
• promote rural-based renewable energy, such as biofuels and wind;
• improve rural health care and education; upgrade rural infrastructure, combat methamphetamines; and
• increase funding to land-grant universities.

They share some views—both want to cap farm-subsidy payments and promote trade. Obama favors corn ethanol and its subsidies; McCain doesn’t.

Here are some tax-related questions that bear on those who own country property:

Second-home ownership. Should there be more tax breaks, fewer, or the same?

Second homes and second-home developments are driving up rural land prices and values. In many parts of the country, farmland is too expensive to buy for farming and timberland is too costly to buy for producing timber. On the other hand, second homes usually turn out to be good investments, build the local tax base and push money through the rural economy. Should some amount of taxable gain be sheltered when a taxpayer sells a second home?

Capital gains. Is there an argument to eliminate capital-gains taxation on property sales by taxpayers who, say, show an adjusted gross income of $100,000 or less? A tax break would help these taxpayers build wealth.

Retirement. Should tax policy be changed to make it easier to include real estate in individual retirement accounts?

Home-office encouragement. Most of us gain to the extent that all of us use less gasoline. Can we discourage commuting by providing tax credits to those who work from home? Is there a way to expense business-related mileage not driven to encourage telecommuting and home-office employment?

Conservation easements (CEs). Taxpayers get significant tax benefits for donating a conservation easement on land that has environmental importance. Wealthier taxpayers benefit the most from CEs. Should we rig tax benefits to favor these donations more, or less, or leave them alone? Should local governments get some payment to make up for the property tax lost on these easements?

Farm energy use. If we are trying to decouple ourselves from petroleum, might the next president consider giving a substantial tax credit to farmers and landowners who use less hydrocarbon fuels and inputs? Should the government tilt toward oil-lite agriculture?

Should farmers (and truckers, loggers and excavators) be allowed to expense the purchase of hybrid and all-electric equipment?

Family farming. Should farm income of, say, $100,000 or less, be taxed at a lower rate to help individuals stay in small, family farming?

Timberland. Should we encourage private landowners to keep woods in timber production since public policy has backed out much public land from timber harvesting?

I should mention, finally, that both candidates are invited to visit Blue Grass this July for a full-immersion baptism by sweat into small family farming–working a hay wagon, cutting firewood and picking rocks out of the pasture, to name a few of the many character-building activities we enjoy.

Hillary, too, is welcome as long as we stick to cattle futures and avoid housing projects.