ice President Al Gore yesterday cast the presidential election as a choice between ''two very stark and clear alternatives,'' while Texas Governor George W. Bush asserted that if the contest is decided on the basis of his record in Texas, ''I'll win in a landslide.''
In dueling television interviews on the Sunday talk shows, Bush defended his handling of death penalty cases in Texas. ''Of course we're executing people; that's the law of the land,'' he said. ''But we're making sure the innocence or guilt question is fully answered.''
Gore explained how he has shifted to the left on abortion and gun control in the past decade and also defended his role in the 1996 Democratic fund-raising improprieties. He asserted that scores of White House coffees for wealthy contributors as well as an event at a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles ''were not fund-raisers,'' and added, ''This is beating a dead horse here.''
The interviews - Gore on NBC's ''Meet The Press'' and Bush on ABC's ''This Week'' - marked the first time the two presidential candidates had appeared on the Sunday talk shows on the same weekend and signaled a more intensive phase of the campaign.
Bush and Gore will be reaching for a larger audience of voters as they prepare for their national conventions and their selection of vice presidential running mates. The Republican convention opens in two weeks in Philadelphia, with the Democratic convention occurring two weeks after that in Los Angeles.
The two candidates covered a range of issues during their interviews. The closest they came to a long-distance debate was on Social Security's future.
Gore said ''you're really asking for some trouble'' by following Bush's recommendation to divert part of the payroll tax to private savings accounts as part of Social Security reform. The Bush plan will produce ''winners and losers,'' he said, and the losers ''will immediately pressure Congress for taxpayer-financed bailout like the S&L bailout'' of the 1980s.
Bush said his plan, not Gore's, addresses the system's long-term financial crisis and said he'd try to develop bipartisan support for comprehensive reforms. Without ''wholesale reform,'' he said, ''Social Security won't be fixed.''
Bush refused to acknowledge that most plans calling for partial privatization of the system require lowering the guaranteed benefits for Social Security recipients, adding that the combination of guaranteed benefits and private savings accounts ''is going to be equal to or more'' than the current prescribed benefit.
Gore repeatedly tried to draw contrasts with his rival. ''I'm for the people. My opponent is for the powerful.'' Bush, he charged, ''represents the old guard, the corporate special interests'' and would ''take us back to the huge tax-cut-for-the-wealthy approach that wrecked the economy before.''
Bush countered that ''attack-dog politics will not play in 2000,'' nor would efforts to criticize his record in Texas, as Gore has attempted to do. If his record at home is so poor, Bush said, ''why have the people of Texas reelected me to become the governor?''
Asked whether Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Patrick J. Buchanan, favored to win the Reform Party nomination, should be included in the fall debates, Gore said, ''Most people would like to see a set of one-on-one debates between Governor Bush and myself.''
