OR THE FIRST time in the presidential debates, Vice President Gore did everything right. He was forceful without being nasty, confident without being arrogant, eloquent without being a show-off. He actually managed to convey a passion for the issues he champions. Governor Bush, by contrast, seemed uncomfortable and unsure of himself most of the time. His answers were often sluggish and meandering; only a couple of times during the debate did he rouse himself and speak with energy and conviction.
As before, Bush's winning theme is, whom do you trust, the government or the people? But he simply wasn't able to express this idea with a rhetorical power to match Gore's promise, I will fight for you.
One of Bush's potentially strongest points was a response to Gore's charge that letting young workers divert some of their payroll taxes into private retirement accounts would leave no money to honor our obligations to current retirees. Bush noted, quite sensibly, that the money could come out of the budget surplus. But this came near the end of the debate, when he was out of time, and was almost glossed over.
Gore adroitly parried the charge that he is a big-spending, big-government liberal, by saying that the Texas state government has increased in size under the Bush administration while the federal government has shrunk in the Clinton-Gore years. He moderated his attacks on big pharmaceutical companies by praising the positive things these companies do and was careful to stress that he would encourage competition and market innovation, not just regulation.
Meanwhile, when Gore called Bush a big spender because of the money Bush proposes spending on tax cuts, Bush had a chance to catch him at showing his underlying belief that the taxpayers' money belongs to the government.
He failed to do it.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
