It’s hard to believe that only two years have passed since Clinton’s health-reform plan died in Congress. Back then, the topic dominated the national conversation. Sure, health care was mentioned often during the debate. You might have gotten the impression that with all the talk, and the passage of such laws as the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill–which allows insurance to be carried from job to job–the problem has been solved. It hasn’t. Though Clinton and Dole both alluded to the enduring problem of the uninsured, for instance, neither offered a convincing solution. The uninsured are the people who usually turn to emergency rooms for care, which then drives up the costs for everyone else. The president, still smarting from the collapse of Hillary Clinton’s ambitious plan, is too chastened to highlight the subject. And Dole’s ““medical savings accounts’’ and tax credits are fine for the well-off, but won’t bring the vast majority of the uninsured in from the cold.

What if crazies get hold of nuclear weapons? This could be the issue facing the next president. Although the Soviet Union is gone, the threat of nuclear weapons remains real: rogue nukes in the hands of outlaw nations or fanatics. The Clinton administration, as the president said, has made some progress on this front, notably by slowing the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. But the larger issue of stray nukes–available in Russia, wanted in Iraq and Iran–isn’t getting detailed scrutiny. True, Bob Dole is touting a ballistic-missile defense to guard against attacks. Just one problem: terrorists could one day deliver nuclear devices in a minivan or briefcase, immune to any kind of missile defense.

Give Dole and Clinton some credit here. Neither has completely ignored the phenomenal growth in entitlement spending on the old. Clinton took a risk and raised taxes on more comfortable Social Security recipients. Dole supported major curbs in the growth of Medicare spending. (And, naturally, each man used the debate to turn the other’s act of courage into a mark of shame.)

But there is still a lot of work to be done on entitlements that neither Clinton nor Dole has been willing to acknowledge. The aging population will overwhelm Medicare and Social Security in the next century. Meanwhile, both candidates have relied on a famous Washington gambit: each suggests setting up a commission to ““study’’ the problem.

As Clinton told the TV audience, back in 1995, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton shook hands at a New Hampshire picnic and vowed to pass campaign-finance reform. Since then, little has been said and even less has actually been done about overhauling the system. ““Neither one of them [Clinton or Dole] really supports it,’’ says Sen. John McCain with a sigh. The conservative Arizona Republican backs Dole but thinks it’ll take a huge scandal before anyone does anything about campaign finance. He may be right. Each week the candidates hustle for dough, whether, as Dole noted in Hartford, it’s Clinton pandering to trial lawyers or Dole shaking down Big Tobacco. Bipartisan measures to curb the influence of special-interest money went down to defeat in Congress–thanks to Bob Dole’s and Bill Clinton’s benign neglect. And without Ross Perot onstage to rail against the ways of Washington, the conspiracy of silence continues.

Clinton and Dole both act tough on law and order–in the debate, Clinton bragged about how he’s extended the death penalty far and wide. But neither talks about a central issue, the seemingly arcane federal ““sentencing guidelines.’’ These rules, born of a 1984 congressionally chartered commission, have the power of law and are tying judges’ hands nationwide. The regulations, especially mandatory minimum sentences, force judges to hand down automatic jail time regardless of the unique circumstances of a particular case. This one-size-fits-all approach can have disastrous consequences. There is rare unanimity on this point: the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, the moderate FBI Director Louis Freeh and a majority of conservative judges all oppose the mandatory minimums. Resources are being wasted on criminals who don’t need hard time. In Alabama, for instance, Nicole Richardson sits in jail for 10 years for giving her drug-dealer boyfriend’s phone number to some of his customers. More than a fifth of federal prisoners are first-time, nonviolent offenders. And because Congress drew an arbitrary distinction between crack and powdered cocaine, many blacks are doing much harder time than their white counterparts. Even the U.S. Sentencing Commission realized the error and recommended treating the drug offenders alike. Naturally, the tough-talking Clinton and Dole opposed this sensible reform.

Even while he protested that he didn’t want to discuss Whitewater or character, Bob Dole did just that, raising the question of presidential pardons. But the problem of trust extends well beyond the Oval Office. Americans are losing faith in many of their institutions. Polls show declining public confidence in everything from schools to banks to government. Thirty years ago three out of four Americans said they trusted the government. Today it’s one in four. Without more confidence in institutions, any president will be hamstrung–whether it’s Dole trying to sell Medicare changes or Clinton trying to push a second-term agenda. And as for attacking each other… well, that doesn’t exactly promote trust in the system, either.