This year’s presidential race has to be the lamest on record.

Clinton, Dole and Perot— we have to pick from the political equivalent of The Three Stooges. Actually, that’s a dis on the Stooges, who deserve far more respect than that.

Not counting the minor-party candidates, do the American people really have to choose between these three losers? Maybe this is some insane collective nightmare, and everyone will wake up on November 5 with a legitimate slate of real leaders from which to choose.

That is what the United States needs — real leadership. The federal government needs a major overhaul. Guiding that overhaul will require a president with strong convictions who is willing to compromise on the details to keep the process moving.

But none of these three can provide the necessary strength for that effort.

President Clinton will go down as a custodial president — he has kept things running smoothly, but he hasn’t done anything to mark himself as one of the great presidents. He may not be an especially memorable one, but let’s be fair to the man. Clinton has certainly done some good things while in office. His administration made a game attempt to provide health insurance to all Americans. While the initiative failed, at least it raised the awareness of a major problem in this country.

And he has put an emphasis on education. A certain large and not-overly-bright columnist was able to start on his new career direction a bit earlier than planned due to the direct student loan program, a program Clinton proposed.

But what is disturbing about Clinton is his ability to bend his views to pump up his approval rating. He has shown little willingness to stick to his guns on issues if his position will be unpopular. And part of being a real leader often requires taking an unpopular position and convincing people that it is the right one to believe in.

Clearly, Clinton cannot or is not willing to do that. He may not be completely unpalatable — even with his minor legal indiscretions — but he is not the right man for the job.

Clinton isn’t the right man, but Bob Dole has absolutely no business being in the Oval Office. Quite simply, electing this man will lead to disaster for the U.S.

Dole is so desperate to be elected that he is willing to promise anything to the voters. He promises an across-the-board 15 percent tax cut, then says he will raise the defense budget and that he won’t touch entitlements.

There simply isn’t enough money in the federal budget to get that done. It’s as if I said, “I’m going to work fewer hours and write less, but I will buy a home theater system and save $100 a month.” Good luck.

“It’s Bob Dole’s turn,” he was saying at the start of the race. But hanging around Congress for decades does not automatically qualify someone to be president. There are more important factors to consider.

Dole gives the impression of being monstrously out of touch with society, of being stuck in a 1950s time warp.

Last week, he said that his campaign would pitch a shutout for the rest of the campaign – just like Hideo Nomo of the Brooklyn Dodgers did the night before.

That could be excused as a slip of the tongue, but the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958. Dole was a young man when the Dodgers moves west. Did he miss something? Is he that tired from the campaign that he’s making these sort of mistakes? If that’s the case, how can he handle the strain of being president?

Dole’s anti-drug slogan sums it all up. “Just don’t do it,” he said at a campaign stop, as if he had a great moment of inspiration. Does he actually think that the youth of America will be swayed by this? Education is the key to preventing drug use, but Dole thinks that a hackneyed slogan will work.

And Dole is locked-in with special interests. He believes that tobacco is as habit-forming as milk is habit-forming. This is the tobacco lobby talking. He can’t possibly be that uninformed about the addictive qualities of nicotine.

But if Dole is an out-of-touch, old-style politician, Ross Perot is a conceited little dictator who probably wouldn’t get a thing done while president. His ideas are not bad, but his personality and methods are not suited to the job.

He knows little of negotiation and compromise. Perot is a man who decides what he wants and gets it by the most direct route possible. That just does not work in the government, even in the crisis it faces now.

Plus, Perot had a chance to use his 1992 candidacy as a launching pad for a legitimate third party, something this country desperately needs. But his ego got in the way.

The Reform Party had a good candidate in Dick Lamm, the straight-talking former governor of Colorado. But the nomination process for Reform was a sham, a way of legitimizing another independent Perot run.

Perot should stay in business where he belongs.

Please, somebody pinch me… This isn’t happening. I know it’s just a dream.

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Kevin S. Kirby is a senior in journalism mass communication from Louisville, Ky. He has a B.A. in political science from the University of Wyoming.