either man closed the sale Wednesday night in the fourth Al Gore-Bill Bradley debate.
Bradley got the better of it by a slim margin on my card; he's easier to listen to over an up-and-down hour. But for Democrats shopping for the guy who can hold on to the Oval Office, there was nobody on stage in Durham, N.H., who could outschmooze William Jefferson Clinton.
If you were looking to be swept off your feet with soaring rhetoric, clever body language, or flat-out salesmanship, you're still waiting. Doughy chunks of indigestible policy-wonkery on health insurance and abstruse Medicaid financing obscured the simple fact these two fellows are much closer to each other than they are to any Republican foe. But personality, not policy, provided the contrasts. Bradley seemed older, calmer, baggy-eyed, more lugubrious - if you dwelt just on his flat affect, less uptight, but also more aloof. You could see Bradley shrugging and going back to private life if he loses. Al would take losing harder than Bill, for sure.
Gore looks younger, more energetic, wound tighter, and more programmed. You can imagine the clicks and whirring in the Gore brain pan as he scrolls through his responses from debate prep. Bradley looks more comfortable in his baggy old dark suits. Gore looks as if he's wearing this suit, shirt, and, necktie for the first time and wonders how they strike people.
Bradley is stuck on explaining who he is, Gore with where things stand in a partisanly divided Congress. Bradley brags of being for handgun licensing and registration in a bold-new-FDR-like scheme he likens to passing Social Security. Gore, weathering seven years of hostile congressional fire on guns, health care, and tax cuts, is less sweeping, more cautious, offering pragmatism more than big-idea promises.
Bradley's I-can-get-further-left-of-you on guns, gays in the military, or sympathy for poor people will not help much in November, but it's Feb. 1 in New Hampshire that counts now.
Bradley's claim to the mantle of leadership is still pretty thin gruel. Hearing him list the Tax Reform Act of 1986 as his progeny is like listening to the second trombone take credit for composing the symphony. Yo, Bill: It's hard to discern your fingerprints from those of fellas named Reagan, O'Neill, Rostenkowski, Mitchell, Greenspan, etc.
Gore, for some inexplicable reason, seems incapable of reminding New Hampshire folk in pithy fashion just how badly they were bleeding till he and Clinton rode in eight years ago and won here by promising - and delivering - prosperity.
Bradley's speech flows more easily than Gore's slow-talking, somewhat choppy declamation, which goes down better in the South. Some watchers proclaimed afterw ard their conviction that Bradley would be a tougher foe for Texas Governor George W. Bush than Gore, whose saddlebags groan with baggage labeled ''Clinton fatigue ... Buddhist nun contributors.'' Bradley deftly left his disdain for Clinton understated but plainly marked. Gore talked lamely about how ''reprehensible'' Clinton's dalliance with Monica and subsequent subterfuges had been. It was apparent that the Democrats running for president have not yet achieved the closure evidenced earlier in the week by Ms. Lewinsky herself, slimmed down, perked up, chatting gamely with CNN's Larry King, and getting on with life, which is more than the politicians are doing.
It is wearing thin, hearing Bradley trying to persuade us that Gore doesn't care about the poor people without medical insurance, Gore arguing Bradley could blunder us into recession or maim Medicare.
Afterw ard I mused how riveting it would have been if Bill Clinton bounded onstage in the last five minutes, elbowed Peter Jennings aside, and hijacked the show, Clinton-style. ''Fellas, let's agree right here, right now, that either one of you is better than George Bush, whose promise of a $2,000 tax cut to every family of four making $50,000 is a flat-out election-year lie.''
Jaws agape, speechless at his cheek, Gore and Bradley stand there, in my fantasy, while Clinton segues into a riff about Bush's progun policy. Bush signed the infamous right-to-carry law that gives Texans legal cover to walk, drive, work, drink, and carouse with a concealed handgun on their person. ''If you think what America's schools and workplaces need is more people packing heat,'' says Clinton drolly, with that patented eyebrow raise he uses to signal that his punchline is a-comin', ''then you should vote for Mr. Bush.''
But little of that Clintonseque stagecraft, the shrewd manuever, the sly strategy, the simple pitch artfully delivered, was on display. Both Gore and Bradley are getting better. But they've yet to close the sale. Bradley, outspending Gore 2-1 on TV, probably has to win New Hampshire to survive. Gore, a less adept campaigner than Bradley in the six months of preliminary skirmishing, is in danger of letting Bradley break through here or in Iowa.
Gore has a chance to slam the door on Bradley here; failing to do that may mean a costly, drawn-out battle. Gore has to raise his game.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
