Who won Gore-Bush battle still a matter for debate, say analysts
The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
smh.com.au
By GAY ALCORN, Herald Correspondent in Washington
What was striking after the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush was how reluctant the pundits were to call it.
Mr Gore highlighted his command of policy. Mr Bush did not fall over.
"A close election just got closer," a CNN political analyst, Bill Schneider, said.
The pundits are loath to give their opinion in case the polls subsequently show the public thought otherwise.
Credible polls are not yet out, so the political parties are spinning, and the professional critics are calling it a draw, for now.
Historically, presidential debates have little impact on the outcome of the election, serving instead to confirm existing prejudices. But they do matter most for a challenger, such as Bill Clinton in 1992, who needed to show - as does Mr Bush - that he could reduce the "stature gap" and appear qualified for the White House.
The conventional wisdom was that Mr Bush, with just six years in elected office as Governor of Texas, had more to lose than the Vice-President did.
Tuesday night's debate was seen by 46.5 million people, lower than expected, given that the election is so close and the polls are seesawing.
Part of the reason was that Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network chose to screen instead the premiere of its series Dark Angels, the first time a large network has refused to show a presidential debate. The decision paid off, with the network getting its highest Tuesday-night ratings ever.
A few analysts argued the debate was a defining moment in this campaign. Jacob Weisberg, a political journalist with the on-line magazine Slate, said Mr Bush "got his clock cleaned" because he did not win any policy exchange from taxation, to abortion, to foreign affairs.
"The consensus going into the debate was that Bush had to prove to the American people that he wasn't too dumb to be president, while Gore had to prove he wasn't too mean. Gore, with disciplined restraint, did show he wasn't too mean. As for Bush - well, he still has two more chances."
The candidates meet twice more in the next fortnight.
Weisberg's cyber colleague Jake Tapper, of Salon, said the weakness of both candidates was exposed, so the meeting was a draw.
Mr Bush was "laughably unprepared" on the issues, and "frighteningly ill-informed" on foreign policy. But Mr Gore's "style and cadence wore thin pretty quick; surely swing voters are contemplating whether they want to listen to his hectoring condescension for four years".
The candidates immediately travelled to swing states and repeated their debate messages.
The Bush campaign claimed Mr Gore embellished the truth by saying he had visited a disaster site in Texas with a federal emergency chief when he had visited alone, and when he used a story of a schoolgirl whose class was so full she had to stand up. The school principal denied it.
Mr Gore did five television interviews attacking Mr Bush's massive tax cut proposal, then was off to a $US750,000 ($1.4 million) fund-raiser with singer Jon Bon Jovi. |
