Back when Ronald Reagan defeated the hapless Jimmy Carter in 1980, Reagan asked this simple question of the electorate: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"

It's too bad the current presidential race doesn't hinge on a simple question, albeit far different than the one the Gipper asked: "Is America a freer country today than it was four, eight, 20 or even 50 years ago?"

In my view, the only reason to support a candidate is if he will increase our freedoms - the right to live our lives as we please, free from government interference and confiscation. Yet both major candidates for president would be loath to ask voters that question.

On some occasions, Democrats complain (although not so loudly when it was put to a vote in Congress) that the Patriot Act and the war on terror are eroding civil liberties at home.

They are right, but then they propose a host of government programs to regulate every last aspect of our lives. They propose rolling back tax rebates and expanding government agencies. They want to federalize everything known to mankind, in direct contradiction to the Constitution, which left most matters to the people and the states.

Unfortunately, Republicans aren't just bad on the Patriot Act and war-related incursions on our freedom. President Bush has yet to veto a bill, and he continues to expand federal involvement in education and federal programs, such as the costly expansion of Medicare to include prescription drugs.

No one even talks about freedom, except in the most banal ways as it relates to the War on Terror (as in, "We need to expand the federal government to fight terrorists who hate our freedom").

Republicans argue that John Kerry amassed perhaps the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and that he will appoint liberal judges to the federal bench if he is elected president. Both arguments are true, but Republican judges have sometimes been less than stellar, if we again focus on that essential question about freedom.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cops can walk up to you for virtually any reason and demand your name. The cop needs no probable cause to stop you, take your name and run it through one of those zillions of intrusive government databases to check you out for any reason at all.

Police officers can go on what one critic called a "fishing expedition." Not that they couldn't before, but now it's even easier for them to say, "Show us your papers, give us your name."

It's none of your business why they need the information.

The case involved a Nevada man who was stopped after a deputy was called about a loud argument. The man, Larry Hiibel, was never arrested for any crime related to the argument. He was, however, convicted under Nevada's "stop and identify" statute - a statute similar to ones on the book in 20 other states, not including California.

The name of the law, at least, is appropriately totalitarian. I'm sure they had rules similar to it in the Soviet Union and in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Stop and obey!

The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee, found it outrageous that, "As best as we can tell, petitioner refused to identify himself only because he thought his name was none of the officer's business."

As I see it, the officer should have arrested the man if there was evidence he committed a crime or simply have left him alone. But, to Justice Kennedy, giving the government power to demand a person's name, with reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, "serves important government interests."

I'm sorry, but the government's interests should not take precedence over the individual's rights. In this case, all the conservative justices sided with the state and the liberal ones with the individual. I know, liberal justices hate property rights and generally are worse than conservative ones. Think about decisions on busing, eminent domain and racial quotas, where liberal majorities have given the government carte blanche.

Unfortunately, the conservatives seem equally willing to give police agencies carte blanche, so liberty gets assaulted from both sides against the middle. Does it really matter whether GOP-appointed judges or Democratic-appointed judges do the damage?

So which candidate advances liberty?

Where's that "none of the above" alternative when you need it?

Don't tell me that issues about freedom are too impractical to make their way onto the agenda. The reason freedom isn't discussed, and won't seriously be discussed in the presidential race, is because neither candidate cares sufficiently about it to force this issue onto the public stage.

When candidates do care about freedom, then freedom-related issues can easily make their way onto the agenda.

I'd like to shift gears, back to the local level.

The Anaheim City Council is moving ahead with the latest measure in its increasingly long list of impressive actions designed to expand the freedom of residents of that city. The council voted to downgrade thousands of city ordinances and code violations from misdemeanor crimes to infractions. The goal is to make government a little less heavy-handed, and to use the code book to go after real troublemakers rather than residents who accidentally commit an offense.

In recent months, three council members - Mayor Curt Pringle, Tom Tait and Richard Chavez - have united to roll back regulations. They declared a moratorium on building fees, which meant that for a limited time residents were allowed to add on to their own property without paying thousands of dollars in pointless "fees" to the city.

They revised the city's general plan to give property owners far more latitude in doing what they choose on their own property. In Southern California and most of the rest of the country these days, property owners are free to do whatever the bureaucrats say they can do. So this is radical stuff, by the standards of our supposedly free country.

The council members also have, in every case that has come before them, ruled on the side of property owners seeking variances for their homes and businesses. They refuse to use eminent domain for non-public uses and they seek to make Anaheim more freedom-friendly, not just for the well-connected and wealthy, but for everyone.

Freedom is improving in Anaheim because the council members decided to make increasing freedom a central part of their agenda.

Are you freer today than you were four years ago?

That's a question Anaheim officials would gladly ask their residents, but one that the candidates for the nation's highest office consistently avoid. That's a sad commentary, and it's probably only going to get sadder as the conventions - think of them as pander-fests - get under way.