HICAGO - Sitting knee to knee with the high priestess of daytime television, George W. Bush was faced yesterday with a true Oprah Winfrey moment.
Tell us, she said, speaking on behalf of her 7 million, mostly woman viewers, about a time when you needed forgiveness.
''When my heart turns dark, when I am jealous, or when I am spiteful,'' the Republican presidential contender said, terse and cool.
Impatient, but also devilish, Winfrey bore in: ''I'm looking for specifics.''
''I know you are,'' Bush rejoined, shaking off his reserve with a grin, ''but I'm running for president.''
The audience roared.
Bush came to Winfrey's famed HARPO Studios seeking not forgiveness or redemption or any other salve for the soul, but a political lift. He is lagging behind Vice President Al Gore in some polls - especially among woman voters. And last week, the Democratic nominee, in his session on the show, appeared to win over Winfrey, a cultural force who this year decided to add politics to a sphere of influence that includes broadcasting and publishing.
Gore exchanged high-fives with Winfrey, joked easily with her. She pronounced the stereotypically stiff vice president a ''fun, funny guy.''
But, although Winfrey probed him about the emphatic kiss he gave his wife at the Democratic National Convention, Gore didn't greet her or say goodbye with a kiss. ''No kiss?'' she said, disappointed.
Bush filled the gap as soon as he hit the set, planting an emphatic buss on the cheek of a surprised Winfrey, who thanked him.
''My pleasure,'' Bush replied.
But despite the energy of the opening, the interview took a stodgy turn until Bush found a humorous way out of Winfrey's question about forgiveness. It proved something of a breakthrough moment. Over the next hour, they talked about his decision to stop drinking 14 years ago and about the defining moments in his life.
The program was marred by a heckler, the first, Winfrey said, in the 15-year history of her show. She had him removed.
Early in the program, Bush whiffed when a 25-year-old unemployed black woman lobbed him a softball that another politician might have hit out of the park.
How, asked a woman named Millicent, do people like me fit into your Republican platform?
''Well, you fit into my platform by having a country that says the American dream is available to you,'' said Bush. ''In other words, first and foremost, it doesn't matter how you're raised, what your background is, if you work hard, you can realize the greatness of the country. I don't know what you're education background is like, but the young Millicents need to be educated.''
But after a commercial break and the forgiveness question, Bush loosened considerably even as Winfrey and her audience delved as deeply into the governor's soul as anyone has managed in this presidential campaign.
What's the biggest misconception about you, a woman asked.
''Probably [that] I'm running on my daddy's name,'' said Bush, referring to his father, the former president. ''That if my name were George Jones, I'd be a country-and-western singer.''
Winfrey asked whether Bush was running to vindicate the family name after his father was beaten by Bill Clinton in 1992.
''Not really,'' Bush said.
''Not in the teeniest part of yourself?'' the host came back.
''Not even in the teeniest, tiniest part,'' he replied. ''Because basically what you're saying is, `Are you running because of revenge?' Revenge is such a negative thought. I'm running for positive reasons.''
Winfrey asked whether Bush's wife, Laura, gave her husband an ultimatum before he quit drinking in 1986.
''Well, there's a lot of speculation about what Laura said ... `It's either you or Jack Daniels,''' Bush said.
''Is that true?'' Winfrey replied.
''Listen, I think she got disappointed in some evenings. I was always a fairly disciplined person, I wasn't drinking all the time, but there were some times when she said, you know, you need to think about what you're doing,'' Bush recalled. ''But she understood what I understand now and what our society has got to understand: It requires the person involved to make up his or her mind. That is what needs to happen.''
The host also asked Bush to describe the defining moment in his life.
''I would say the defining moments in my life were, one, marrying Laura, and, second, the birth of our twins,'' he said.
Bush also related how his trip from Midland to boarding school gave him his greatest moment of self doubt.
''I got up to a place called Phillips Academy, Andover, in Massachusetts, where it was just a whole different world ... I can remember thinking how brilliant all the other kids were and how hard I had to work to catch up,'' he said.
