AST NIGHT, George W. finally became a VW, a small, cramped vehicle that sputtered and puttered, desperate to get to the end of the 90 minutes without running out of gas. On several occasions, Al Gore stole his hubcaps.
Gore, often accused of being too wooden, waxen, or whimsical about his accomplishments, got down to an important piece of business in the third and final debate by getting Bush to concede how his tax cuts benefit the wealthy. Bush thought he was doing us a great favor, saying the ''the top 1 percent will end up paying one-third of the taxes in America and they get one-fifth of the benefits.''
Only one-fifth? How kind of Bush.
With that, Gore looked out to the entire audience and said:
''If you want somebody who believes that we were better off eight years ago than we are now and that we ought to go back to the kind of policies that we had back then, emphasizing tax cuts mainly for the wealthy, here is your man. If you want somebody who will fight for you and who will fight to have middle class tax cuts, then I am your man.''
All Bush could say, no matter what the issue, was how he trusts the people, don't the government. All he could say was he believes in local control, don't trust the government. Put your trust in private industry, don't trust the government. At some point you had to ask, if Bush telling us don't trust the government, why is he running to run it?
Bush's wheels completely fell off on affirmative action. He refused to answer Gore directly on whether he supports the Supreme Court's view of it. As the 90 minutes wound down, with a questioner boring in on a Bush who seemed too proud of using the death penalty, it was clear Gore was revving up for a fourth debate. Bush was looking for the nearest filling station.
Small cars may have an economy but can be too small to carry around the complex cargo of the presidency. George W., the VW, showed that his horsepower is too weak to be entrusted with the presidency.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.
