10/12/00 8:20 a.m.
“W” Stands for Win?
Bush on a roll.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

ased on how well Gov. Bush did in Wednesday's second presidential debate, expect a huge bounce in the polls for Al Gore.

No, not really. But this year has been so unpredictable that one hesitates to announce a clear win for either candidate in the debates. One further hesitates to predict exactly what a debate "win" means in the context of the polls too.

With those caveats in mind, this particular writer thought George W. Bush did very well. I'm not as convinced that this was as clear-cut a victory for the governor as the immediate reaction from focus groups and the ABC poll suggest. Still it's not surprising that Gore performed poorly. Going into the event, he had at least four balls that he had to remember to juggle — following the reaction to last week's debate "win." He had to be careful not to embellish; he had to watch his sighs; he had to be careful not to look arrogant and he had to try to keep his issue "advantage" in place.

It was too much to handle.

Gore was certainly not at the level of his game from last week. For the most part, he was rather mild, not too obnoxious, but just, well, dull. Surprise, surprise. Gore was temperamentally on the defensive. In the area of exaggeration, Gore notably changed the wording of his attack on Bush's tax cut. It no longer goes to the "richest 1 percent." Now it goes to the "wealthiest of the wealthy." Why, when talking about global warming, he brought up the old saw about the polar caps melting, is inexplicable. Even the New York Times has repudiated its own story on that topic.

Bush, on the other hand, came in engaging and demonstrated that he had a solid hold of the issues. The fact that Lehrer chose to focus more on foreign policy this time around benefited Bush. The large areas of agreement helped neutralize what should have been Gore's experiential edge. Bush also flashed more humor throughout the debate. Answering Lehrer's question about objections to specific U.S. military deployments over the last two decades, Bush winked, that he had something of a "conflict of interest" in commenting on Reagan-Bush military policy. This elicited clear chuckles from the audience. When questioned about Gore's tendency to embellish, Bush noted that everyone makes mistakes, intentionally mispronouncing the word "syllable" in the process. But Bush did not leave it as a joke, criticizing Gore without coming across as too strong. While Bush's humor at his own expense was self-deprecating, Gore's appeared self-conscious.

Bush also demonstrated a sly subtlety that had not been evidenced before. After one of the first questions on foreign policy, Bush stated that it was important that America not be "arrogant," but instead be a "humble, yet strong" nation. These were odd words to use to describe a country — but they are perfect words to describe a country's leader. Consider the negative words that were used to describe Gore's performance last week: "condescending," "obnoxious," "dismissive," "arrogant." Bush was clearly making a surreptitious comparison, not merely between foreign-policy views, but between the personalities of the two candidates: Gore is arrogant, Bush, "humble, but strong." Bush did something similar responding to a question on the Middle East. "Credibility is important" if America is to be a true "honest broker" in bringing about peace. Which candidate has the "credibility" problem in this race? Bush also obliquely criticized the administration by stating that peace couldn't be forced on the U.S.'s timetable. This spoke to what had been Bill Clinton's transparent attempt to bring the peace process to culmination before the end of his term. Bush instead said that the process had to work on the timetable of the principals.

Bush generally got to all of his major points this time around. Last week, Gore took control of everything (to his detriment, as it turned out). Bush expanded the questioning on racial profiling into a discussion on his views on education. Gore didn't take the opportunity to respond in kind at that moment. Gore's failure to do that led to a tactical mistake on the veep's part. He mentioned to Lehrer midway through that he hoped there would be a question on education. When that didn't occur, Gore decided to devote his entire closing comments to his education policy. Bush, having hit all of his major topics by that time was able to present a comprehensive statement — where he also humbly asked for the American people's vote. Gore never gave a complete close. Thus, Bush left a final impression of being more together.

But Bush didn't escape completely unscathed. Gore was clearly "on" in his criticism of Texas's record on health care. Bush barely refuted the charges. Gore connected Bush's tax cut plan with how he used the Texas surplus to give "tax cuts" to the oil industry. It's hard to say whether this late-in-the-game full-out attack will grab the voter's attention, but it is not something Bush can ignore.

Still, this time around, the Texas governor came out on top. Now, about those polls…