OVER, N.H. - Vice President Al Gore began a new adventure in campaigning last night, answering questions of people who have not decided how they'll vote in the Democratic presidential primary.
Gore stood in the gymnasium at Dover Middle School last night and stayed there for several hours, until the last of the 200 voters who'd gathered had finished grilling him. It was, aides said, a scene reminiscent of the town hall meetings he used to hold in Tennessee when he was first elected to Congress in 1976.
''Any of you who have any doubts about supporting me for president, I want you to use this as an occasion to purge all doubt,'' Gore said, half in jest, at the outset of the meeting.
The people here politely queried Gore about a panoply of concerns: prescription drugs, health insurance, missile defense, campaign finance, special education, pornography on the Internet, the budget surplus, and Gore's political legacy and morals, among other things.
Laurie Malizia, who voted for Bob Dole in the last election, wanted to know if Gore would embarrass the country the way President Clinton did in the Monica Lewinsky episode. ''I fully believe our country is in a mess,'' she said. ''One of the things I need in a president is an honest man and a moral man and I'm very disappointed in this president.''
Gore said he would bring his own values to the office of the presidency.
''I understand the disappointment that you feel, and I felt it myself,'' Gore said. ''I think most people want to look to the future, turn that page and move on. All I can do is tell you about myself and tell you about my commitment to you.''
Gore talked about his 29-year marriage to his wife, Tipper, and about his mother and father and how they met. And he talked about his respect for the democratic process.
''I will never betray it,'' Gore said. ''I'm in this because I want to make a positive difference and I'm in this because I think I can.'' Malizia said later she was impressed by the answer.
For last night's forum, 2,800 undecided voters from Strafford County were invited to attend, based on phone calls and canvassing that found them unsure whom they would support. All have a history of voting in past Democratic primaries. About 20 Gore supporters were also invited. A second open meeting is scheduled for Monday in Nashua; there is at least one planned in every county in the state before Christmas.
''People who said, `I'm with Al Gore all the way weren't invited,''' said Douglas Hattaway, Gore's New Hampshire spokesman.
Jaron Arnold, 12, who attends the middle school, told Gore that many of his friends like to go on the Internet, visit Web sites with pornography, and print it out. ''How would you prevent that?'' he asked.
Gore said the school should be able to filter out inappropriate sites from the computers. But in one of the evening's amusing moments, the school's principal stood up to tell the vice president that no student could access pornography in the school.
Gore went back to the student and discovered that his friends were accessing the pornography from home computers.
''Parents, you've got to pay attention to this. You would not let your children go out in big city alone in the middle of the night in a dark alley, would you?'' Gore asked. ''Of course not. If that's your attitude, you should not let them go alone, unprotected and unfiltered on the Internet. There are a lot of dark alleys and red-light districts and free-fire zones and you must protect them.''
Though he praised the Internet as a valuable resource, he also said some material is inappropriate.
