Gore, Bush aides spar over debate miscues

By Tom Raum, Associated Press, 10/12/00

LANGHORNE, Pa. -- While the presidential contenders mostly stayed above the fray Thursday, their surrogates refought the first and second presidential debates.

TRACKING THE GAFFES

A half-dozen mistakes or questionable assertions from each candidate in the first two presidential debates:

George W. Bush:
* Said the three men convicted in the Texas murder of James Byrd were sentenced to death. Two were; the third was sentenced to life in prison.
* Suggested he'd withdraw U.S. troops from Haiti. All but a few are already out.
* Voiced support for instant background checks by saying guns should not be sold to those who ought not to have them. Texas failed to perform full background checks on 407 people granted concealed handgun licenses under a law Bush signed in 1995. Of them, 71 had convictions that should have excluded them from having licenses.
* Said the number of Texans without health insurance had declined while the number in the United States had risen. Last year, the number of Americans without health insurance declined for the first time in at least 12 years.
* Complained about being outspent by Gore in the presidential race. Excluding the primaries, when he spent twice as much as Gore, Bush is sharing the same amount of federal money as Gore in the fall campaign, and spent nearly twice as much as the Democrat did in the first month. Special interests backing Gore have outspent special interests behind Bush, however.
* Said no American would pay more than a third of his or her income in federal taxes under his plan. Few do so now.

Al Gore:
* Said he favored requirements that all students be tested. His education plan does not add any requirements for universal testing.
* Noted he was one of a few Democrats to support President Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq, and said that, ``for whatever reason,'' the war ended without Saddam Hussein's being removed from power. He did not mention that he had assailed President Bush for his prewar Iraq policy and declared the war ``never should have taken place.'' Or that he had counseled against occupying Iraq to install new leadership at the time.
* Quoted the Book of Matthew as saying, ``Where your heart is, there is your treasure, also.'' The biblical passage has it the other way around: ``For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.''
* Said he had not questioned whether Bush has the experience to be president. He had, several times.
* Said he had accompanied James Lee Witt, the federal emergency response chief, to Texas to inspect wildfires. He had not.
* Accused Bush of supporting a plan that leaves children in failing schools for three years before giving parents vouchers to help pay for private schools. He didn't mention that the school accountability provisions in his own plan take two years.

   

Al Gore's team accused Bush of "errors on life-and-death issues," particularly the Texas governor's inaccurate statements about a Texas crime. Bush officials conceded the miscue, but said the Gore camp was frantic.

The furious back and forth came a day after the two candidates squared off in Winston-Salem, N.C., in their second of three presidential debates.

For the most part, the candidates themselves engaged in low-key campaigning -- Republican Bush in suburban Philadelphia and Democrat Gore in Milwaukee -- as an attack on a U.S. warship in Yemen and new violence in the Middle East cast a shadow over the race.

Gore aides followed the same script that Bush's campaign used against them a week earlier. Their primary target: Bush's statement that three men convicted in the 1998 Texas dragging death of James Byrd Jr. behind a pickup truck would be put to death.

In fact, only two got the death penalty; the third received life imprisonment.

The criticism focused not only on Bush's mistake -- which he acknowledged quickly -- but on whether such a comment could taint further legal proceedings.

"That is a statement that prejudges the outcome of the case," Gore campaign chairman William Daley said in a conference call with reporters.

"Governor Bush made serious errors, including errors of life-and-death issues," said Gore campaign spokesman Mark Fabiani. "Mr. Bush needs to be held to the same exacting standard applied to Al Gore last week."

The Gore campaign distributed a statement by Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe, who wrote that "the governor's statement is a truly shocking one for any executive official to make during the pendency of appeals from criminal convictions."

Firing back, Bush campaign officials insisted Bush's mistakes were less serious than what they view as Gore's shading of the truth.

"I think the Democrats are frantically trying to distract attention from their candidate's problem with credibility and his long and disturbing pattern of misrepresenting, embellishing and exaggeration," said Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes.

Gore officials suggested Bush's misstatements were not being treated as critically as Gore's had been.

In the first debate, Gore wrongly asserted that he had traveled to Texas in 1998 with the head of the federal disaster agency to inspect flood and fire damage. He also overstated the plight of a 15-year-old Florida girl he said was forced to stand in class because of overcrowding.

The misstatements allowed Republicans to wage a weeklong assault on Gore's credibility. The Gore campaign sought to turn the tables on Bush.

Bush officials noted that during Wednesday's debate they had distributed a press statement correcting the sentences received by the three men in Byrd's death.

And Bush acknowledged the error in a post-debate interview on ABC. "Listen, we all make mistakes," he said. Bush declined to say whether his mistake on the Byrd case was comparable to Gore's alleged miscues.

"When Governor Bush made a mistake -- as everybody does -- we immediately corrected it -- rather than trying to spend two weeks obfuscating, changing stories and exaggerating the exaggeration," Hughes said.

L. Michael Seidman, a Georgetown University law professor not associated with either campaign, said it was "inappropriate for him (Bush) to speak in such emphatic terms" of the executions.

Still, Seidman said he did not see Bush's statements as creating a serious problem for the defendants' appeal in court. "Judges are not as subject to public pressure" as jurors are, he said, adding, "I think it's less of a problem." It would have been different if Bush had made such statements pretrial, he said.

Meanwhile, Gore spoke to about 3,000 people in Milwaukee in his only campaign event of the day, before heading back to Washington for national security consultations.

Bush campaigned alongside Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge in this Philadelphia suburb and then headed for Grand Rapids, Mich.

At a town hall-style meeting, Bush emphasized Social Security and other issues important to seniors in a state that has one of the nation's largest elderly populations. He also stopped by a party for senior citizens at a Philadelphia recreation center.

"I take nothing for granted. I've got lot of work to do," Bush told reporters.