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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank Griffin who wrote (50756)	10/22/2000 10:36:55 PM
From: ColtonGang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Give third debate to Gore in a Pyrrhic victory William Safire WASHINGTON, D.C. -- If the town hall meeting between Bush and Gore were a prizefight being scored on points, the judges would declare Al Gore the winner. He earned more debating points and gets credit for aggressiveness in carrying the fight to his opponent. George W. Bush won the first debate by not losing; Gore lost the second debate by not fighting. In the rubber match, like the sadly victorious King Pyrrhus, Gore won the third debate in a way that may cost him the election. To the vast army of undecideds, this debate was conducted in body language. Gore bestrode the stage like a Colossus, expressing confidence in a John Wayne swagger, once almost butting his puffed-out chest against Bush in a Lazio-like space invasion. When not speaking, the vice president stood stiffly at attention, to remind us visually of his service in Vietnam. Playing to an electorate that supposedly dislikes finger-pointing, Gore repeatedly pointed an accusing finger at Bush and all around the room. In this way, he goaded and tried to rattle Bush, who airily dismissed these devices as "an old high school debating trick." Bush, in contrast, often struck a Milquetoast pose, fingers intertwined as if in prayer, rocking from side to side as if his feet hurt. He looked plaintively to the referee to enforce the rules against direct elbowing in the clinches, while Gore -- having shed the ill-fitting sheep's clothing of the previous meeting -- resumed his lupine lecturing. Bush dismayed his supporters at first by failing to counterpunch when given clear openings: Gore's claim to have cut the federal payroll by 300,000 cried out for the easy comeback: Almost all of that was in Defense Department reduction after the Reagan-Bush Cold War victory. And Gore's campaign finance piety invited a sharp riposte: He's all for putting the barn door in a lockbox after stealing the fund-raising horse. Not until the second half did Bush rouse himself to remind viewers that cynicism and apathy would be overcome when the nation elected "somebody who'll tell the truth." He got in a good lick about abolishing the unpopular death tax. He used a prepared line to underscore his big-spender charge -- "If this were a spending contest, I'd come in second" -- and closed strongly by reciting the promise that most irritates die-hard Clintonites: "To uphold the dignity and honor of the office." Did Gore succeed in showing sharp difference between policies, so necessary to getting out his vote? Yes; to arrest the seeming slide toward Bush, he returned to the populism of the Democratic convention, using "fight" as his keyword, holding himself out as the class warrior out to soak the rich and to drive big oil and the big drug companies to the wall. But in so doing, Gore displayed the difference between candidates in personality. He came on strong; he knew it all; he slid around questions to touch all the hot buttons. For once, the personas reflect the persons; the images are close to the realities; "the style is the man himself." Gore is truly tough-minded, stupefyingly experienced and unabashedly divisive, while Bush is truly amiable and not all that deep and all too eager to unify. Thanks to the revealing debates, what we see is what we'll get. Now we can make an informed choice Return to top © Copyright 2000 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.