Looking Back On Boston

Mixing it up face-to-face for the first time, Al Gore and George W. Bush jousted energetically over domestic issues in Boston on Tuesday night. Afterward, both White House hopefuls were sanguine as they headed back out on the campaign trail.

For 90 minutes on the University of Massachusetts campus, the vice president and the Texas governor jabbed at one another on tax cuts, prescription drugs, Social Security, energy policy, abortion, the Supreme Court and education.

A CBS News Poll taken immediately after the debate found that 56 percent of those who watched the debate said Gore won the encounter, while 42 percent said Bush was the victor.

"I felt awful good about the debate last night," Gore told CBS News Wednesday morning. "I didn't see it as about me or Gov. Bush. It was about the American people and their chance to hear a discussion of two very different approaches to what kind of country we're going to be in the future."

Neither candidate is resting after the Boston showdown. Bush is headed for campaign events in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Gore is also spending the day sumping in Ohio.

Several times during their TV showdown, Gore and Bush interrupted each other even though they weren't supposed to do that under the traditional, two podium debate format. Each candidate split his time about evenly between explaining his own agenda and deconstructing his opponent's.

For Bush, the debate was his second chance to make a first impression since he introduced himself to the country at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August.

Who "won" the debate may depend on whom you were inclined to support beforehand. Neither made any costly mistakes. Both handled most questions well.

But the "loser," if you will, was the soft-spoken moderator, Jim Lehrer, who was shouted down several times.

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Bush kept asking why Gore's priorities haven't been accomplished by now.

On prescription drugs, he said of the Clinton-Gore administration, "It seems like they can't get it done."

On energy policy to prevent future oil shortages, he said of Gore, "He should have been tackling it for the last seven years."

And on bipartisanship in Washington, he asked of the current White House, "Why haven't they done it in seven years?"

Gore scored against Bush's big tax cut, repeatedly depicting it as a boondoggle for the richest people in the country. He said Bush's plan spends "more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent, than all the spending he proposes for education, health care, prescription drugs and national defense combined. Now I think those are the wrong prioritie."

Bush replied that Gore was using "fuzzy math" and "phony numbers" against him. They couldn't even agree on the size of the tax cut in dispute. Bush said he'd return $1.3 trillion of the projected ten-year federal budget surplus to taxpayers. Gore said the tax cut was $600 billion larger than that.

The governor defended his tax cut - the sine que non of his domestic agenda - with an argument he's been hammering on the stump. Bush said the difference between Gore's approach and his is the "difference between government making decisions for you and you getting more of your money to make decisions for yourself."

One of the sharpest exchanges between Gore and Bush unfolded over their dueling plans for prescription drugs.

Gore drew contrasts with Bush on school vouchers and abortion. The vice president made the point that Bush is for vouchers, which Gore opposes, at the end of a dense exchange that may have created the impression that the two candidates have the same education agenda.

A discussion of the abortion pill RU-486 - just approved by the FDA - led to an exchange about what kinds of justices Gore and Bush would nominate for the Supreme Court. Both men said they would not use "litmus tests" to choose judges, but Gore acknowledged that his nominees would likely support the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion rights.

The conventional wisdom going into the debate was that Bush needed to demonstrate gravitas and mastery of the issues, while Gore needed to play fair and resist the impulse to beat up on his GOP rival as he did on Bill Bradley during this year's Democratic primaries.

Performance-wise, Bush certainly cleared the bar, though he had a cuple of weak answers. Asked how he would respond to a financial crisis, Bush basically said he'd consult with Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and with his Treasury secretary.

A stature gap may have appeared when moderator Lehrer asked each candidate for an example of handling "crisis under fire." Gore explained his high-level diplomatic role during the war over Kosovo. Bush talked about comforting disaster victims in Texas.

Tight as fists, neither candidate came off as Mister Personality. Bush's famous affability was not in evidence. And the "stiff" Al Gore was resurrected for the night.

The vice president was not supposed to lecture too much or condescend to Bush, either. But on some networks, Gore could be seen on a split screen smirking and shaking his head while Bush spoke.

The only time that any Clinton era scandals arose in the debate came near the very end. Prompted by a question from Lehrer, Bush criticized Gore over the fund-raising scandals from the 1996 campaign. Bush mentioned Gore's controversial visit to a Buddhist temple that year - and said the vice president needed to take responsibility for what went on in the White House.

"I believe they've moved that sign, `The Buck Stops Here,' from the Oval Office desk to the Lincoln Bedroom, and that's not right," said Bush.

"You may want to focus on scandals. I want to focus on results," Gore countered. But when the vice president challenged Bush to support campaign finance legislation, the governor said bluntly: "This man has no credibility on the issue."

CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and the cable Fox News Channel aired the debate live. NBC gave its affiliates a choice between the baseball playoffs and the debate. The Fox TV network did not air the encounter.

Early ratings show ABC and CBS got 32 million viewers for the debates, more than watched the two networks for the first 1996 debate between President Clinton and Bob Dole.