What if we could sit the presidential candidates down at a table and havethem complete a host of psychological tests: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, me Survey of Personal Values, along with tests of leadership, honesty, mood, and so on? What could We find out?

Since these are validated tests, we'd know for sure where the candidates stood in these categories relative to the population at large and, of course, relative to each other. We'd know who was smarter, more impulsive, more honest, more creative. We'd even be able to predict future behavior, such as how each candidate might react in a crisis, or how vulnerable each one is to depression or faulty thinking.

There is precedent for using tests to select government leaders: In ancient China, administrators were selected using a battery of SAT-type exams. Shouldn't we use today's sophisticated tools to evaluate our candidates? Don't we deserve the best information we can get?

Unfortunately, the electorate generally shies away from detail--we're all too busy for that--and the image-makers would certainly want to keep their candidates far away from our testing table. Thomas Edison's first invention was a tabulation device that showed visitors to a state legislature exactly how lawmakers were voting on every bill. After only a few votes, the legislators disabled the device. Voters would get ornery, it seemed, when they knew the exact tally.

So we live in a world in which we don't want too much information about our leaders (unless it's steamy, of course) and in which our leaders are more than willing to accommodate us. But the tests exist, and I, for one, would love to see how our candidates truly measure up.

From afar, there are limits to what we can discern, but we're not entirely helpless. In "Behind the Rhetoric," journalist Sarah Blustain will show you how behavioral scientists rate candidates Bush and Gore based on their speeches, facial expressions and policies on mental health.

In this especially rich issue, we'll also give you the latest scoop on dreams, show you the personal side of one of America's most creative psychologists, and take you behind the scenes in both a "love lab" and an emergency psychiatric ward. We'll even give you a glimpse of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY in the year 2025. We know no bounds.

ROBERT EPSTEIN is editor-in-chief of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, University Research Professor at United States International University in San Diego, and Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Massachusetts. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981. You can reach him at psychtoday@juno.com.