Boston.com / Politics / Campaign 2000 / News
Advance forums find little to fault

By David Abel, Globe Correspondent, 10/3/2000

he pundits and pols came out early yesterday to spin their spool of predebate predictions.

As the news media, party loyalists, and other political types took up their positions at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, a small cadre of election-year gurus met at the John F. Kennedy Library to make their best guesses on how George W. Bush or Al Gore would govern as president.

While much of the forum focused on the increasing difficulty of separating seasons of campaigning and governing, the panel divided along partisan lines.

The commentators from the right included two Texans, state Senator Teel Bivins, a Republican, and Secretary of State Elton Bomer, a former Democratic state representative who was appointed by Bush. On the left was a former Democratic congressman from California, Vic Fazio, and the former ambassador to Mexico, James Jones, a Clinton appointee. They were joined by the chief of the Globe's Washington bureau, David M. Shribman, and National Public Radio producer Susan Feeney.

Among the toughest questions from the audience read by the moderators, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and Weekly Standard senior editor David Brooks: What are the candidates' weaknesses? Those who responded were deft in their ability to find good in a potential bad.

''I worry about a lack of focus,'' Fazio said about Gore. ''He has so many areas in which he wants to move the country forward.''

There was at least one area of general consensus: A candidate, as well as a president, must learn to act. Quoting the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jones said, ''If you don't have the qualities, you better learn to fake it.''

At another forum last evening, veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder grilled a group of well-known figures from past elections on their views about tonight's debate.

Two of them, former governor Michael Dukakis and Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, offered humorous anecdotes about their experience debating Al Gore. The others, Herb Klein, President Nixon's press secretary; Ted Sorensen, a senior advisor to President Kennedy; and Sander Vanocur, an NBC News reporter at the first televised presidential debate in 1960, recounted the history of the Kennedy-Nixon debates and how they had an impact on all debates since.

Given the close race, the panelists agreed that tonight's debate could be crucial in tipping the balance. ''Tomorrow is going to be the World Series and Super Bowl wrapped in one,'' Kemp said.