Web Sites Offer Comparison Shopping for Candidates

You compare products before buying a new PC. So why not comparison-shop for a new president?

That's the logic behind PriceGrabber's just-introduced Presidents channel. It joins the site's regular channels, which let you compare prices and shipping costs for books, PCs, home electronics, and videos. Now, you can also view side-by-side comparisons of majority-party presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush.

"Making a decision about a presidential candidate is much like shopping," says Tamim Mourad, PriceGrabber's president. "You find the best sources of information, compare, and make an intelligent decision."

The Presidents shopping channel provides a terse, two-column comparison of the candidates' stands on 23 issues. To some degree, the chart is a helpful, at-a-glance overview. But these are complex issues (such as medicare and tax reform), and the two-to-five word summaries can be as confounding as they are clarifying.

A Sampling of the Summaries

Some examples of PriceGrabber's brief summaries of the candidates' stands on key issues include:

Abortion. Gore: "Strongly pro choice." Bush: "Pro-life; no litmus test." On this issue, the differences as explained in PriceGrabber are clear.

Civil rights. Gore: "Pro-ADA & women's rights." Bush: "Anti-quota; anti-gay marriage." This one is relatively straightforward but unbalanced. For example, why contrast Gore's support of women's rights with Bush's disapproval of gay marriage? It's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

Families and children. Gore: "Protect kids from smut, drugs & tobacco." Bush: "Abstinence; v-chip; tough laws." Tough laws against what, exactly? And is abstinence Bush's idea of birth control? If so, why is Gore's position on birth control not mentioned by comparison?

Luckily, PriceGrabber provides links to Issues2000.org, where each candidate's position on the issues is spelled out.

Digging Deeper and Further

For more pre-election comparison shopping, check out Voter.com. You can compare Bush and Gore side by side on eight major issues and click to read more on each candidate's opinions. Even better, you can also compare the other presidential candidates, such as Pat Buchanan (Reform) and Harry Browne (Libertarian). There's nothing about the increasingly popular Ralph Nader's stand on the issues, however. And though there's an option to compare Cheney and Lieberman, the site provides no information on their positions.

Speaking of shopping, the candidates have been on a splurge, and Opensecrets.org provides handy side-by-side charts on their spending. According to the site, Bush has outspent Gore by nearly $67 million, though Gore has about $3 million more remaining in his arsenal than Bush has. For a local perspective, you can view presidential fund-raising by state, metro area, and zip code.