ENTON, Ark. - The women who work the presses and wait on the customers at Colonial Cleaners say they aren't buying a word of it.
No matter which candidate is speaking, and regardless of what he is saying, they consider it so much hooey. Bush promises this, Gore promises that, and the women shrug off the possibility that either will improve their lives.
''They can promise you everything,'' Rose Riley, 41, a clothes presser, said while on break before the lunch-hour rush. ''Then they get up there and can't do anything or don't do anything.''
Added Rosalita Ray, 40 and also a presser, ''It's like a man before you marry him.''
The co-workers got a good laugh over that. But they weren't laughing about their Election Day options. Whether for Al Gore, or for George W. Bush, or as yet undecided, they bad-mouthed both as pampered princes unfamiliar with worries of working people.
Up and down Main Street in this central Arkansas town of 21,000, where per-capita income averages about $21,600 a year and where the ''new economy'' is almost nil, eligible voter after eligible voter invoked the phrase ''lesser of two evils.'' Few expressed glee over a Gore presidency, or said they backed Bush with enthusiasm. The best they could offer was an affinity for the values of one party or another.
''My three biggest issues are gun control, abortion, and taxes; I'm against all three,'' said Janet Shelnudd, 51, who handles insurance claims for a group of heart surgeons in Little Rock, 30 or so miles to the northeast.
As she waited to have her car repaired at one of two gas stations on Main, she added, ''I like George Bush OK, I guess, but I really hate Al Gore.''
Said Bobby Sparks, 70, a Democrat who has owned a small Main Street department store called Sparks since 1962, but who has been hurting ever since Wal-mart opened nearby, ''I don't want to let either of them in.''
For the folks on Main the other day, the truth appeared to be especially elusive this campaign season. Men and women, managers and clock punchers, Democrats and Republicans, all said a belief in one man or the other has been hard to come by.
Theirs was not the political disillusionment of modern youth. It was more like a mature disgust. Having seen presidents come and go, having put their hopes into Washington-bound candidates before, they said they have learned to expect politically expedient lies.
''I don't believe either of them, because they're all liars,'' said Fern Ausbrooks, 69, who owns Benton Plaster Craft, which is crammed with objects for outdoor display. ''I say this would've been a good year for Ross Perot to run. There's just something about that little guy,'' the former Reform Party candidate who challenged President Bush in 1992 and President Clinton in 1996.
Last time, however, Ausbrooks voted for Clinton. With an eye to the economy, this time she's leaning toward Gore. So were the workers at Colonial Cleaners, who said the Democrats seem at least a bit more attuned to the middle class. The Republicans, and by extension Bush, are too hoity-toity for them.
''Are the rich just wanting us all to die off?'' said Ray, who makes $6.35 an hour. ''Well, they'll be up the creek then. Who are they going to get to do all the peon jobs?''
The way 30-year-old Eric Starkey saw it, however, Bush offers the business people along Main Street the best chance to fare even better economically than they did during the Clinton years. As general manager of Benton Office Supplies, which his family owns, he said he is most concerned about reducing taxes.
Voter turnout in Arkansas typically exceeds the national rate, and Benton routinely has one of the highest turnouts in the state. Saline County has 48,000 registered voters, and local candidates said that at least 32,000 are expected to go to the polls Tuesday.
But with good-size headquarters for both parties in Benton, the Democrats in a converted house on Main, the Republicans in offices within view from the street, the local outcome is too close to call. On Main Street, the only certainty seemed to be that politicians in general and the two running for president in particular will not be held to their promises.
''We all know they all blow smoke,'' said Glenn Harrison, 65, a retired Corps of Engineers technician.
