It's "Reach Out" time. It happens every four years. Someone gets up in front of the Republicans and reminds the white people filling 95 percent of the convention hall that the party has to reach out. Who better than Colin Powell? He told the delegates in Philadelphia that it was time to "reach out to minority communities and particularly the African-American community." Then, he issued a warning: "The world is watching to see if all this power and wealth is just for the well-to-do, the comfortable, the privileged."

Someone should give Gen. Powell the news. The facts are in. Power and wealth in America are most definitely reserved for the privileged. At the level of substantive policy, both the Democrats and the Republicans are in cordial agreement on this point, with their only disagreement being how many padlocks to set on the door to keep the unprivileged out.

Gen. Powell says the "world" is watching, an assertion I strongly doubt, unless "world" is defined as being synonymous with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. It is true that Greenspan watches extremely closely to ensure that no tiny increment of extra wealth seeps into the wage packets of ordinary Americans. The moment it does, he terms the seepage "inflationary," and jacks up interest rates.

Gen. Powell tells his party to reach out. In a couple of weeks, the Democrats will boast that they have reached out, that America is a richer, better place than it was at the end of 1992. The purpose of both conventions is to hearten the faithful and to suggest to the rest of the country that there is a healthy, two-party system at work, and that it would be a terrible thing to waste your vote in November on Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan or any other candidate.

Indeed. Why squander your political energies over the next three months? Why waste your vote in November? If you vote for Gore and he wins, then what? Remember what happened when some of you voted for Bill Clinton in 1992? You got a president whose bold promise and bright expectations came to a permanent halt four months after his inauguration, a collapse signaled by the arrival in the White House of Reagan's man, David Gergen. Vice President Al Gore was the man who typed out the press release announcing Gergen's arrival. You could have voted for Bill, or you could have voted to keep George Bush Sr. in four more years. It didn't make any difference. You wasted your vote.

In fact, by the time he gave his presidential oath, Clinton's presidency, as anything other than a vehicle for economic orthodoxy, was in the ditch. Wall Street was duly acknowledged with a deficit reduction program, and the "forgotten middle class" remembered with tax hikes.

Not content with throwing away your vote on Bill Clinton in 1992, some of you did the same thing in 1996. Why? You didn't like Bob Dole. So, you voted for Bill, and lo! you got Dole, anyway.

Now, don't think that Al Gore was running in and out of the Oval Office trying to persuade Bill Clinton to do the decent thing, and that a vote for Al will really and truly be a vote for something different. Study the record. Bill Clinton occasionally remembered his better self. In that traumatic spring of 1993, he roared out in frustration to his cabinet that he hadn't been elected to have his agenda destroyed by a bunch of bond traders. Gore's never had a better self to remember. Travel all the way back to his very first race for Congress, in 1976. (Better still, travel to a bookstore after Labor Day, and buy Al Gore: A User's Manual, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. You'll find the full record in there.)

At the substantive level, the two parties mostly offer an iron ceiling. Does anyone really believe that any Republican administration will suddenly decide to redistribute wealth down and not up? Or that Gore will load up the Supreme Court with justices the caliber of William Douglas or Hugo Black, tame the oil companies, and strike fear into the hearts of the corporate malefactors? Real Gore, if he makes it into the Oval Office, will have to get his judicial nominees past Orrin Hatch. If Douglas were around today, Gore wouldn't nominate him, and the Senate wouldn't confirm him.

Real Gore ushered in David Gergen. Real Gore was Dick Morris's prime ally. Real Gore was the man who gave Bill Clinton the decisive push on the welfare vote. Real Gore worked, alongside Bill Clinton, with the Republicans, just as Morris urged.

Want to look at Reorganizing Government, Gore's baby in 1993? He did things the Reaganauts dreamed of in 1980 with the Office on Economic Competitiveness and the Grace Commission, but would never have gotten past a Democratic Congress. In the name of cutting red tape, he destroyed civil service protections and opened the door wider to cronyism, racism and looting of the public purse.

If Gen. Powell took his own advice seriously, he'd quit the sort of charade he played earlier this week, and campaign for Ralph Nader.

To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.