10/12/00 7:45 a.m.
Bush by a Mile
Bush gave his best debate performance ever last night.

By Ramesh Ponnuru, NR senior editor

eorge W. Bush clobbered Al Gore in the second presidential debate. What's more, Gore knew it by the end: He seemed rattled in his closing statement. Bush knew he was doing well, too: He seemed to gain confidence, and get better, as the night went on.

Again and again, Gore was on the defensive. He has been running away from gun control recently, and continued to do so last night by beginning his answer to a question on the subject with a disavowal of any desire to infringe the rights of sportsmen or homeowners. When he talked about health care, Gore was quick to say that he wanted a "smaller, smarter" federal government and had headed the Clinton administration's "reinventing government" project.

On two other occasions, Bush had Gore playing catch-up. Gore forgot to say anything nice about cops when he discussed racial profiling; Bush didn't, and Gore was left to express his agreement. Bush also cleverly shifted the focus of the civil-rights section of the debate from hate crimes and racial profiling to education, calling reading "the new civil right." Gore got around to education only in his closing statement, in which he lamely described it as his "number one priority" (a distinction it shares with campaign-finance reform and universal health care).

Bush was also more successful than Gore in expanding on his campaign's themes of the last week. Gore's campaign has spent the last few days suggesting 1) that Bush is an incompetent and 2) that he's been a lousy governor. The first charge was helpful to Bush because it lowered the bar for his performance in the second debate when his upsurge in the polls after the first might have raised it. And Bush effectively rebutted the charge by displaying a reasonable knowledge of foreign policy and avoiding any verbal train wrecks.

Gore's attempts to bring up the second point backfired, as Bush was able to explain that the Texan problems Gore mentions have diminished during his tenure. Indeed, in his response to this second point Bush was able to extend his campaign's principal argument about Gore over the last week: that he's a liar. When asked to defend the attack on Gore's honesty, Bush retreated very slightly at first but then handled the question beautifully. "Well we all make mistakes," he said. "I've been known to mangle a syl-LAB-uhl or two." He managed to seem self-deprecating while actually minimizing a widespread critique of him. Then he went in for the kill: Gore "exaggerates" when talking about important matters of policy. Bush explicitly suggested that Gore's comments about Bush's tax plan could not be trusted. In this short exchange, then, Bush defended himself from two attacks and sharpened an attack of his own.

Compare this to Gore's performance. When Gore was asked to defend his campaign's attack on Bush, he ran away from its negativism. His defense was weak, too. All he could say was that he "got some of the details wrong last week." As Bush pointed out, Gore's problem with the truth is of considerably longer standing than Gore would have it. Gore's other vulnerabilities were not addressed well, either: He may not have sighed, but he was hardly likable.

Finally, Gore was unable to capitalize, as in the first debate, on a strong economy that should be one of his chief assets. He never had a chance to talk about the economy directly in last night's debate, never mentioned the 22 million new jobs every speaker at the Democratic convention mentioned. He talked about it only in the context of foreign policy (other countries will give us lectures if we go back to deficits) and of environmental policy (the clean vehicles of tomorrow will give us all great jobs). (The latter point led one of my fellow debate-watchers to ask whether the vice president was referring to rickshaws.)

The second debate was, in short, a rout. If the polls over the next week reflect Bush's victory, he should be able to enter the third one with even more confidence.