A friend asked last week whether to expect a "soft landing" of the economy despite a crash in the markets. My reply: It's more likely to be an economic crash, and a soft landing of the markets. The third-quarter gross domestic product report and the Dow's bounce followed the next day.

The third quarter was not, by itself, a crash. It was, rather, a halving of the growth rate -- to 2.7% so far. But history suggests that the trend will continue: Slowdowns tend to turn into slumps. There is almost no reason to think we've reached sustainable growth.

The Dow bounce was therefore not really good news. It only reflected the bad news, and the better chance that the Fed won't pull the interest-rate trigger again just yet.

And if we are on a path to a slump, then pity the candidate who actually wins our presidential election. If it's Al Gore, he'll have to backpedal on his many emphatic statements that he will "balance the budget every year" and pay off the federal debt. Gore has even said that he would raise taxes in a recession, so important is it to keep the budget balanced. I truly hope he didn't mean this, and for all our sakes, dear readers, so should you.

If the winner is George W. Bush, we have a different worry. Bush has promised an anti-recession program: his giant tax cut. That would also prop up our Asian trading partners, for a time. The problem is that Bush would have no leverage over the Fed, which would tighten radically as it did under similar circumstances in 1981. Bush, even more than Gore, could end up destroying his presidency in a financial crisis and debt deflation.

So who will it be? Let me turn to my real point. The best way to predict the economy is to identify historical parallels to current behavior. The best way to predict the outcome of an election -- I will argue -- is to look not at polls but at the record of the past election.

Of course, the 1996 election was totally different. Bill Clinton was an incumbent, Bob Dole was geriatric, Ross Perot was in the race. Or -- was it all that different?

Here's a little game you can do on a spreadsheet. Suppose that everyone who voted for Dole in 1996 votes for Bush this year. Suppose that exactly 70% of those who voted for Perot also vote for Bush. All who voted for Clinton and 30% of Perotistas go to Gore, except that Ralph Nader gets 5% of the total vote -- all of which comes directly from Gore. What would happen?

The answer: There would be a virtual tie in the popular vote, with Gore ahead by just 30,000 out of 92 million ballots cast. Gore would win by 273-268 in the electoral college. And the states would divide closely along the lines of what is currently expected in the statewide polls, down to Washington for Gore and Oregon for Bush. (OK, I show Florida for Bush and West Virginia for Gore -- we shall see how that goes.)

If this exercise is valid, four lessons emerge:

The fourth and final lesson of my little exercise is this. Just like the Fed and the markets, you really can rig an American election. Third parties do it all the time. Teddy Roosevelt elected Woodrow Wilson in 1912, Perot locked in Clinton in 1992. Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader both tried it this year. Whether either will succeed remains to be seen. And exactly what Pat's game was, we don't know for sure.

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James K. Galbraith is author of Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (Free Press, 1998) and director of the University of Texas Inequality Project. A professor at the University of Texas at Austin and senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, he worked for many years on the staff of the House Banking Committee, where he conducted oversight of the Federal Reserve. He welcomes your feedback and invites you to send it to James K. Galbraith.

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