EW ORLEANS - A black minister laid hands on Al Gore yesterday, as supporters prayed for help and ominously warned of the consequences should the vice president lose to George W. Bush.
Everyone addressing the group of about 75 religious and social leaders agreed the outcome could hinge on voter turnout, particularly among African-Americans, so speaker after speaker urged the audience to inspire their followers to vote.
''We ask you, oh God, to wake our people up and help them to understand, not what they're about to get or to win, but what they can lose in this election,'' said the Rev. Zebadee Bridges, one of those to pray for Gore at the meeting in a downtown hotel.
''We know that it is dangerous when people are no longer concerned about the best man for the job,'' added Bishop Paul Morton. Placing his hand on Gore's forehead, as he did to Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, in 1992, Morton cast the election in biblical terms. ''We are not going back to Egypt,'' he said, ''We're not going back to the wilderness. We like the Promised Land.''
After the crowd cried out in agreement, Gore replied: ''Never have I been able to say with such conviction that I feel blessed this morning.'' He described the election 17 days hence as a ''fateful choice.''
Wearing a crisp business suit but looking groggy as he continues a nonstop campaign schedule, the vice president said Bush's policies give insight into the Republican nominee's priorities. He criticized Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut as overly beneficial to the wealthy and condemned him for not spending more on education.
''We're going to have change,'' Gore said. ''The question in this election is, `What kind of change?' Are we going to continue to change in the right direction, or are we going to take a right-wing U-turn and go back to the policies of the past that did not work?''
The vice president spoke with alarm about what Bush's election could mean for constitutional rights. He said the Texas governor has pledged to appoint ''strict constructionists'' to the Supreme Court and views conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as his models.
''You know what that phrase means,'' Gore said as members of the audience sounded out in agreement. ''I believe that it is wrong to take the narrowest possible definition of a phrase written more than 200 some-odd years ago and use that as an excuse for not really breathing life into the rights that we all know our founders intended us to have.''
Yesterday, a Reuters/MSNBC daily tracking poll showed Bush with 45 percent of the vote and Gore with 44 percent. That was a break in the candidates' recent deadlock but still within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.
A new Newsweek magazine poll showed Bush leading 48 to 41 percent among likely voters, still within the 4-point margin of error, while a CNN-USA Today-Gallup tracking poll showed Bush leading 51 percent to 40 percent, which is outside the poll's 4-point margin of error.
Such figures have buoyed the Bush camp recently, and both the governor and staff are talking of victory in states that might have appeared beyond their reach a couple of months ago.
Speaking via satellite yesterday from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush told supporters in Washington state: ''We have a solid chance to sweep the West Coast.''
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the campaign is so confident of winning Louisiana and Ohio that they will cut back on advertising there, though a recent poll showed the two candidates still running even in Ohio.
The vice president, at the gathering in New Orleans, acknowledged that the race is the closest since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won by an average of a single vote per precinct. That added urgency to the task, he said.
''It depends on your willingness to carry with you the particulars about health care and education, but more than any of that, it depends upon your willingness to carry in your heart - and especially for the next 17 days - a burning passion about the future of the United States of America,'' the vice president said.
Amid the politicking, some details of Bush's foreign policy emerged. Aides yesterday elaborated on a report in The New York Times that Bush would tell NATO that the United States should no longer participate in peacekeeping in the Balkans. In an interview with the Times, Bush's chief foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said, ''The governor is talking about a new division of labor.''
Under this arrangement, European nations would take responsibility for peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo, while the United States would focus on deterring and fighting wars in the Persian Gulf, Asia, and other trouble spots.
Karl Rove, the chief strategist for the Bush campaign, said Rice's statements were consistent with what Bush has been saying throughout the campaign, that the United States needs ''to rearrange our strategic relationship with Europe so that we would be peacemakers rather than long-term peacekeepers.''
During his second debate with Gore, on Oct. 11, Bush said, ''I'd very much like to get our troops out of'' the Balkans.
''I recognize we can't do it now, nor do I advocate an immediate withdrawal. That would be an abrogation of our agreement with NATO; no one's suggesting that. But I think it ought to be one of our priorities,'' Bush said.
Fleischer said yesterday that Bush would not take any ''precipitous'' action and that the governor believes ''upon election it is important to work with our allies, including all members of NATO ... to begin the discussions on how long our troops need to remain.''
Gore responded to the proposal by saying it showed ''a lack of judgment and a complete misunderstanding of history.''
Speaking to a rally of union workers in Washington, D.C., Gore said withdrawing from the Balkans would amount to ''in effect turning our back on 50 years of commitment to America's most important security alliance.''
Similarly, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that ending the US role in Balkan peacekeeping would send a ''very dangerous signal.''
''Frankly, to be talking about this right now, when [Yugoslav President Vojislav] Kostunica is putting together his new coalition ... I think is truly dangerous,'' Albright said in an interview with Reuters news service.
Johnson reported from New Orleans; Abraham from Austin.
