House more down and dirty over environmental issues than this one's likely to be, we're hard pressed to think of it. In this corner: Al Gore, Bill Clinton's green crusader and author of Earth in the Balance, a manifesto stuffed with more eco-data than Bruce Babbitt's hard drive. In the opposite corner: George W. Bush, governor of Texas, heir to the Bush political legacy, oilman, baseball fan, and a guy with an environmental record that seems negligible at best. Sound like a no-brainer for the green vote? Think again.

"There's this automatic preconception that Bush is not a friend of the environment," says Austin-based journalist Bill Minutaglio, who wrote this month's profile of the GOP contender ("Earth, Meet Dubya! Dubya, Earth!" page 82). "But part of his 'compassionate conservative' platform is saying, 'I can be a better steward of the environment than any other Republican.'" While researching his 1999 biography, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty, Minutaglio was twice granted an audience with the guv. But when Outside asked him to check into Bush's political ties to Mother Earth, Dubya's campaign managers tossed our man back and forth while they scrambled to hammer out environmental policy statements. "I'm pretty sure they saw me as this kind of low-grade affliction that just wouldn't go away," says Minutaglio, a senior reporter for the Dallas Morning News.

For Ned Martel, chief political correspondent for Voter.com, pinning down Al Gore ("Presidential Timber," page 74) wasn't so much difficult as intimidating. "He's phenomenally knowledgeable," says Martel, who did grad work at the University of Michigan in 1994 on a Ted Scripps Fellowship and later worked as a senior editor at George. "Al Gore is so convinced he's the most qualified candidate on green issues," Martel observes, "that he almost can't believe people take his challengers seriously."