Gore Attacks, Bush Charms

You could almost hear the huge, collective sigh of relief that came rumbling out of both political camps as Al Gore and George W. Bush came to the end of their third and final face-to-face encounter.

For supporters of the vice president, the good news was that their tiger finally brought his "A Game" into play. From the outset, Gore went on the offensive and his forceful verbal jabs and demeanor set the tone for the 90-minute exchange in St. Louis.

At the same time, he managed to be aggressive without resorting to the disdainful sighs and other displays of arrogance that set off such a negative reaction after the first debate.

But Bush backers also had reason to smile, if not exactly stand up and cheer. Even though he failed to score many points on substance - Gore clearly had the edge on issues and specifics - the governor weathered most of the blows and did not commit the kind of glaring mistakes that were apt to damage his campaign in any major way.

More to the point, he generally came across as affable, which has long been recognized as his political trump card. Throughout the evening, he seized opportunities to turn on the charm and inject light banter into the proceedings.

The final debate was more lively and spirited than the first two encounters, and the casual, "town hall" format may well have had something to do with that. Both candidates seemed to welcome the chance to respond directly to questions put to them by a group of undecided voters.

The queries covered a broad range of concerns from health care and education to gun-control and pornography, and most of the answers by both Gore and Bush were framed in phrases that have become all too familiar to those of us who have been listening to their repetitious rhetoric over the past few months.

That clearly calculated strategy may well have served the purpose of reassuring their respective bases, but I certainly didn't hear anything that struck me as the kind of stunning or dramatic utterance that would persuade many voters to shift their allegiance.

Still, there were a few sparks here and there. At one point, in response to a woman's question about affirmative action, Bush emphasized his commitment to diversity and what he called "affirmative access."

To which Gore replied: "I don't know what affirmative access is, but I am for affirmative action." He then challenged the governor to declare where he stood on affirmative action as defined by the Supreme Court. Bush fended off the question without answering it, and the debate moved on to other matters.

A few moments earlier, Gore offered his version of a verbal tactic that Ronald Reagan employed with telling effect a generation ago.

"If you want someone who believes we were better off eight years ago than we are now and that we ought to go back to the kinds of policies we had back then - emphasizing tax cuts mainly for the wealthy - here is your man," he said gesturing toward ush. "If you want somebody who will fight to have middle class tax cuts, then I am your man."

Bush did not let that go unanswered. "You talk about eight years," he said. "In eight years they haven't gotten anything done on Medicare, on Social Security, a patients' bill of rights. It's time to get something done."

Here in our shop, the high point came during a squabble over whether initiatives in education should be carried out on the federal or state level. Bush asserted that Gore's budget plan calls for the largest amount of federal money ever spent on education, "three times larger than what President Clinton proposed."

Gore countered by saying that was "absolutely not true," and he accused Bush of taking that claim from a campaign advertisement that had been "knocked down by journalists."

"Forget the journalists!" Bush thundered. As a battle cry, it may not measure up to "Remember Pearl Harbor" or "We Have Not Yet Begun To Fight." But it has a certain resonance.

And students of irony might be amused to know that the "journalists" who "knocked down" that particular claim are employed by the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper whose editorial page is not exactly known for its hard-hitting attacks on George W. Bush.

In the meantime, as we move into the final three weeks of what promises to be the closest presidential election in 40 years, I look for some enterprising merchant to flood the market with T-shirts emblazoned with the words, "Forget The Journalists."