The big message many citizens took away from the Republican and Democratic National Conventions was that, apparently, we're supposed to really like the candidate's wives and families. Spouses were certainly featured more than any serious discussion of some important issues facing most Americans.

As we've said before more than once, poor media coverage and lame campaigns mean that for most Americans still listening, the national campaigns will resolve themselves into a choice between two similar groups. One group feels stronger about abortion rights. The other feels stronger about tax cuts. Everything else is about personalities and insipid TV commercials.

That's why I'm sharing my list of five issues that are important enough to me to influence my support of candidates for federal office.

According to current surveys, and I read a lot of them, these five issue groups are also important to most Americans. You probably also think a lot about the following (in no particular order):

1. The incredible and growing gap between the rich and poor. More wealth is concentrated in fewer hands than ever before in history, and more than in other industrialized country.

2. Curbing corporate greed and public welfare to profitable corporations. Surveys show that most Americans do not trust large corporations or Wall Street to do what's right in leading the country. Workers are laid off and stocks skyrocket. Working families pay far more than their fair share of taxes. Corollary to this issue: The tightening control of multinational corporations on our national and international economy.

3. Strengthening of human and civil rights, especially for those being shoved to the margins in the "New Economy." Polls show that most Americans believe that corporations made out better in the "boom economy" that individuals and families. Just over half believe that they were essentially left out of the boom. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance.

4. Environmental protection. Even many longtime polluting firms no longer dispute the existence of that Greenhouse Effect. Erratic weather patterns are causing historic floods, fires and droughts right here in America. The lobsters died in Long Island Sound.

5. Eradicating injustice in the criminal justice system. Even staunch death penalty advocates, including former FBI Director William Sessions and Illinois Governor George Ryan, have urged a moratorium on state executions until studies on the death penalty's application and on capital convictions can be made. Certain federal drug laws have encouraged the conviction of ordinary people as dealers without helping solve the drug problem.

Your might not know these subjects were particularly important from what we're told and shown in the mass media. And if the major parties don't want to discuss my list in a meaningful way, fine. This year there are other people on the ballot who are talking about my list, from both the left and from the right. And people are responding to them.

(Michael Miller was formerly Director of Public Affairs for the Town of North Hempstead. He is a public relations consultant.)