Bradley challenged the vice president in a debate for not persuading President Clinton to issue an executive order against racial profiling -- generally defined as when police stop motorists based on their race.

And Gore vowed that if he becomes president, "the first civil rights act of the 21st century will be a national law outlawing racial profiling."

But the problem is not one that can be remotely solved by a presidential order, or indeed by a president at all, experts say.

"It sounds good," said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank. But, "There's virtually nothing that a president of the United States can do."

An executive order affecting only federal law enforcement agencies may be conceivable but state and local police are overwhelmingly the ones that pull motorists aside -- not the likes of the FBI.

"Probably 99 percent of racial profiling takes place on the highways," Bositis said. "The federal government does not police the highways."

Moreover, the Supreme Court has invalidated attempts to use statistical information -- such as data on how many black people are stopped by police, or executed by states -- to shape how criminal justice is applied.

That fact also complicates other proposals heard in the debate as both candidates stressed the need to reduce racial disparities in the justice system.

Bradley promised to "pass the Racial Justice Act" aimed at reducing the disproportionate use of the death penalty against blacks and tackling other racial disparities. "I will not at the end of the day compromise it," he said.

But Bositis said that because the Supreme Court has held that racial data cannot impact the course of criminal justice, Washington can't do much, short of getting rid of the death penalty.

"There's absolutely minimal support for that in the Congress," he said. "They'd be lucky if they got 100 votes" in the House.

As for racial profiling, the American Civil Liberties Union is campaigning against the problem and fighting it in court. But the solutions it is proposing are not as simplistic as a presidential order.

Instead, the ACLU is urging states to take legislative action and is supporting a federal bill that would encourage the collection of information quantifying racial profiling.

These complexities were only hinted at in the debate.

"Why doesn't he walk down the hall now and have President Clinton issue an executive order?" Bradley asked rhetorically of his opponent, repeating a question from an earlier debate.

Bradley gave a taste of the nuances when he said: "I would issue an executive order that would eliminate racial profiling at the federal level. I would try to pass a law to get information gathered at local levels so that we could see how the police departments are acting. I would make sure that the Justice Department was involved."

Gore obliquely referred to a president's true weapon against racial profiling -- the bully pulpit.

"I think that we have to make certain that, in this country, not only will driving while black never be allowed to be a crime," he said, "but we just have to say that we are going to become one people and prevent these incidents, partly by putting as much energy into education as we do into incarceration."

Bositis said that to extent the federal government can do anything to alleviate racial profiling, it would be to the benefit of Arab-Americans more than blacks, because federal officers often give undue scrutiny to Arab-Americans at airports.