Welcome To The Nasty Season
For those of you just tuning into the presidential race, the tone has grown quite negative, quite fast. And the fall campaign season has only just begun, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts.
On Tuesday, Democrat Al Gore barely waited for his GOP rival, Texas Governor George W. Bush, to outline his prescription drug plan before he pounced.
"It leaves millions of seniors without any prescription drug coverage. Middle-class seniors. Nearly half of all those that don't have coverage today would not get coverage," said the vice president about Bush's plan.
Sensing an advantage on one of this fall's pre-eminent issues, Gore is mercilessly hammering Bush. He's even approved the release of an ad he'd held back - a spot that skewers the governor's record on children's health care in the Lone Star State.
Until Labor Day, the traditional kickoff to the fall campaign, Gore was happy to let Bush do the attacking, hoping the governor would look negative and desperate. The tone changed when Bush mocked Gore for retreating on his promise to debate anytime, anywhere.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'any time' is," Bush has said, referencing a infamous line uttered by President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Bush agreed to go head-to-head with Gore on two talk shows, but accepted only one of three prime-time full-network debates recommended by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan, privately-funded panel. The Gore campaign suggested that Bush was afraid to face the broader audience the commission debates draw.
"I compared it yesterday to a team heading into the Super Bowl saying, 'Ah, no, I don't want to play in that city. I only want to play three quarters, not four. And I don't like the referees and I don't want too many people to watch the game,'" Gore's running mate Joe Lieberman told CBS News' The Early Show. on Tuesday.
Janet Brown, the commission's executive director, is optimistic that the debates would go on.
"I don't think leverage is the issue and I don't think the commission is the issue," she said. "I think the debates are the issue and that they should be held in a way that maximizes their effectiveness."
On Wednesday, Gore will turn the heat up a notch on his "substance over sound bites" theme and lay out in specifics his economic plan for America, hoping his command of the issues will dazzle voters, and bury his opponent in detail.