USA Today’s website has a “Candidate Match Game” which allows you to determine which presidential candidate most shares your views via a neat interactive tool.

There are twelve “statements,” in four separate categories, and for each you can use a slide rule to determine the “importance” of that issue to you and then choose a position from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” As you answer, the graphic on the top changes according to reflect which candidate you are leaning towards.

The downsides: This tool isn’t really useful to most people outside of that small percentage of Americans who can genuinely be classified as “swing voters,” and the overly simplistic and sometimes misleading wording of the questions — i.e. “U.S. military forces should be withdrawn from Iraq” (”agree” puts you in Obama’s column, while “disagree” puts you in McCain’s column, despite the fact that the main difference between the candidates is over timing and determination of how/when to reduce troop levels — not whether or not it should happen at all) — further hampers its accuracy.

In addition, lots of important issues are completely left out — energy policy, for example, isn’t even represented aside from the rather frivolous question about a “gas tax holiday.” There’s no mention of offshore drilling, ANWR, or oil shale. No mention of nuclear power. No mention of alternative energy policy whatsoever. Considering energy will arguably be one of the most important and deciding issues in this election, it’s astonishing that USA Today neglected to include it.

The upsides: You can roll over the “issue” buttons in the graphic to learn about each candidates’ statements and positions on the issue. While USA Today had to (obviously) be rather selective in what quotes it chose to represent the candidates’ positions, it’s interesting to note the striking contrasts between the two candidates on most issues.

I say “most,” because perhaps the most interesting feature of this tool is that for the last three issues — same-sex marriage, global warming, and immigration — the candidates’ positions are virtually indistinguishable from one another — the graphic doesn’t change regardless of what answer you choose.

Same-sex marriage: Both Obama and McCain say they “personally believe marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman” but both believe the issue of marriage should be left to the states to decide and are against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Neither believe that states should be forced to recognize same-sex marriages that take place in other states.

Global warming: Both McCain and Obama stress the threat of climate change and both support implementing government caps on carbon emissions in order to force more environmentally-friendly behavior by U.S. companies.

Immigration: Obama and McCain are almost in stereo on this issue — they have even both used the term “path to citizenship” to describe their plans for creating a process to allow 12 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S. a way to become legal citizens. Both also say they want to “tighten border security.”