fter Tuesday's presidential debate, pundits and polls offered distinctly differing views on whether Al Gore or George W. Bush was the victor.
There also appeared to be a wide divergence of views after Thursday's vice presidential debate on which man, Dick Cheney or Joe Lieberman, did the most to help his ticket.
With some pundits arguing that Bush had fared better at the debate, or at worst tied with Gore, perhaps there is some substance to the view that a lot of pundits want to keep presidential campaigns as close and controversial as possible.
But the truth came from voters interviewed by pollsters. Virtually every poll gave Gore the debate victory over Bush, with one even giving the vice president a 14-point margin over the Texas governor. In general, polls at week's end continued to give Gore a slight lead, although statisically the race is considered a dead heat.
With four weeks and two debates to go before the Nov. 7 election, Bush has his work cut out for him, unless Gore blunders badly in these remaining days.
As well as Cheney did in Thursday's gentlemanly vice presidential debate, Leiberman did more to help the Democratic ticket, stressing Gore's agenda, which is aimed largely at the elderly and the middle class. By contrast, Cheney did little to bolster Bush's agenda, aimed largely at the same voters who are still undecided.
There does not seem to be a lot that Bush can do at this late stage of the campaign to move ahead in the polls. Gore has virtually discredited Bush's tax cut plan as a tax cut for the wealthy, and has seized the high ground on issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and more help for middle class families.
Perhaps the only opportunity left for Bush lies in Gore's apparent tendency to embellish or distort the facts, whether at the debate podium or on the road. It is a tendency that concerns some of Gore's own backers, who wonder why this pattern continues, given that the errors are easily caught by the media, and that Gore's aides could easily make sure the stories are accurate before the candidate delivers them.
For example, Gore told three stories during the debate, and reporters afterward found that none was entirely accurate. One involved Gore's report of a 15-year-old girl in Sarasota, Fla., who attended a school so crowded that she had to stand in class. News stories later revealed that she went without a desk for only one day.
Gore also said that he traveled to Texas with James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to inspect fire and flood damage there. The media later reported, as his campaign explained, that Gore did go to Texas, but two years later, and not with Witt.
At the start of the debate, Gore said he never questioned Bush's qualifications for the presidency. But the media reported afterward that Gore asked this question in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors: ''Does he have the experience to be president?'' And another media report noted that he asked the same question during an interview in April with The New York Times.
And there was Gore's story about a woman who had to pick up cans to get enough money to buy medicine. Later reports said that she has a well-off son from whom she refused to accept money. The woman, it turned out, is more eccentric than impoverished.
Before the debate, Gore's embellishments were already well-known to the media. During an appearance in Florida last month, he said his mother-in-law pays $108 a month for the same arthritis medicine he gives his dog for $47.80 a month. But when reporters began checking the story, Gore's campaign staff explained that the figures came from wholesale studies and did not accurately reflect his family's drug costs.
Despite all this, Gore holds that small edge in the polls. Republicans are still trying to show voters that Gore's distortion of facts on the stump represents a serious character flaw - one that suggests he can't be trusted to be truthful as president.
During the remaining weeks of the race, the Bush campaign hopes that enough of these stories will raise doubts in the minds of enough voters to tip the scales to their candidate. But the issue may not be enough to counter voters' concerns about important issues such as Social Security, Medicare, drug costs, and education.
Those voters may decide on Election Day that they care less about Gore's embellishments in his folksy stories than they do about what he will do as president.
Robert A. Jordan is a Globe columnist.
