A civil exchange ends on a sharp note

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

BOSTON, OCT. 4. Whether it was tax cuts, health care, social security or the environment, the first Presidential debate here was punctuated by philosophy and vigour with both the Vice- President, Mr. Albert Gore Jr and the Texas Governor, Mr. George Bush, holding their own for 90 minutes.

A skilled debater and one who has the head for numbers, Mr. Gore seemed to waste no time in going after his opponent - and repeating several times during the course of the debate - that he is not for giving breaks to a small minority of the wealthy. And the Texas Governor, true to where he comes from, labelled it all between who decides and who gets the breaks - the government or the people.

Call it carefully scripted or whatever, Mr. Bush accused his opponent of coming up with ``phoney numbers'' or ``fuzzy Washington Math'' when the Vice-President was ripping apart Mr. Bush's tax cuts, who would benefit from the prescription drug plan or where the social security was heading down the road. On one occasion, Mr. Bush took a dig at his opponent in a direct fashion.

``This is the man who has got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math,'' he said when Mr. Gore argued that the wealthiest one per cent get their tax cuts in the first year but that 95 per cent of the seniors would have to wait for five years before they saw a single penny coming their way.

For the most part, the first debate revolved around domestic issues with the Yugoslav President, Mr. Slobodan Milosevic, thrown in as a foreign policy question. The response from the candidates came not only by way of what the United States should do with the Yugoslavian strongman - the only agreement the whole night perhaps was that Mr. Milosevic had to go but that American force should not be used - but on the role of Russia, the limits of American power, and the role of the U.S. overseas. And the Iraqi President, Mr. Saddam Hussein, too figured, not by way of Washington's policy towards Baghdad, but on the issue of energy security and policy.

Clearly focussed on his core supporters of environmentalists, Mr. Gore opposed his opponent's plan to partially open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. ``The only way to become less dependent on foreign sources of crude oil is to explore at home...Today we import a million barrels from Saddam Hussein,'' Mr. Bush retorted.

Dressed in identical dark suits, white shirts and red ties, neither Mr. Gore nor Mr. Bush made any serious mistakes; but the expectations were certainly more on the Vice-President given his skills as a debater as also in the experience of the last seven years. For that matter, Mr. Bush had to rise up in the charts, the first challenge in proving to the American people that he is up to the job as President. Analysts believe that Mr. Bush has more than passed his first test.

Abiding by strict rules, Mr. Gore seized the first opportunity by saying that the Bush economic plan would mean spending more money on tax cuts for the wealthy one per cent than all of the spending proposed for education, health care, prescription drugs and national defence combined. Mr. Bush countered by saying that Mr. Gore's plan would lead to a ``dramatically'' bigger government with at least 200 new or expanded programmes and an additional 20,000 bureaucrats on the payrolls.

The two candidates also sparred on the issue of abortion. Using the recent Federal Drug Administration's approval of the abortion bill as a starting point, Mr. Gore went on the offensive saying that he supported a woman's right to choose and that he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would not tamper with the 1973 Roe vs Wade case that legalised abortion. Mr. Bush for his part, said that he was pro-life, but discounted the suggestion that he would use this as a litmus test for appointments to the high court.

The exchange, which was quite civil, got somewhat sharp towards the end when the question turned to character. Mr. Bush criticised Mr. Gore on the fund raising scandals and argued that the latter has to take responsibility for what went on in the White House.

Mr. Bush remarked that he believed that the sign ``The Buck Stops Here'' had moved from the Oval Office to the Lincoln Bedroom and that was not right. To which Mr. Gore's response was, ``You may want to focus on scandals; I want to focus on results.''

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