ANCHESTER, N.H. - Wednesday night, Vice President Al Gore stepped out on a limb where few politicians dare to venture: ''There has never been a time during this campaign when I have said something that I know to be untrue,'' Gore declared in his televised debate with former Senator Bill Bradley.
Several times during the debate, and again yesterday, Gore insisted that he has always supported both a woman's right to choose an abortion and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that ensured that right.
But Bradley's campaign asserted yesterday that on Wednesday night alone, Gore made several misstatements of fact, and not just on abortion. A review of Gore's congressional voting record shows that, as a House member from Tennessee, Gore voted in 1977 for an amendment that said, in part, that abortion ''takes the life of an unborn child who is a living human being,'' and that no right to abortion ''is secured by the Constitution.''
In 1984, Gore also supported an amendment to a civil rights bill that would, in one clause, have redefined the term ''person'' to include ''unborn children from the moment of conception.'' The amendment failed, but the National Abortion Rights Action League at the time said its effect would have been to end federal funding for hospitals that perform abortions.
With Bradley's challenge to Gore, abortion has suddenly become a contentious issue in both party's primaries. Among Republicans, more conservative candidates like Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes have challenged the sincerity of the antiabortion positions that Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Senator John McCain of Arizona both say they hold.
But Bradley's direct assault on Gore's integrity during the debate, and again yesterday in campaign appearances, is intended to cut deep. It also underscores longstanding concerns - voiced by Gore's own presidential campaign aides in 1988, according to memos obtained recently by the Boston Globe - that Gore has a predilection for embellishing facts to burnish his personal resume or professional accomplishments.
Since early last year, for example, Gore has said, without foundation, that he created the Internet. He has also said that he and his wife, Tipper, were the models for the movie ''Love Story,'' only to be contradicted by author Erich Segal. Last month, in a lengthy profile in the Washington Post, Gore acknowledged his memory had failed him when he once said that Hubert H. Humphrey used some of Gore's wording in his 1968 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
To some who recall Gore's first run for the presidency in 1988, such claims have a familiar ring: In that campaign, Gore appeared to overstate his exposure to danger during his military service in Vietnam; erroneously claimed that his investigative reporting at the Tennessean in Nashville in the 1970s had sent people to jail; and falsely insisted that half of his staff members were women.
In two memos to Gore in late 1987 and early 1988, his press secretary, and then his communications director, warned Gore that he had developed a record for stretching the truth. ''Your main pitfall is exaggeration,'' Arlie Schardt, the campaign's communications director, warned Gore in March 1988. In September, 1987, Mike Kopp, the campaign's press secretary, told Gore in another memo that his image ''may continue to suffer if you continue to go out on a limb with remarks that may be impossible to back up.''
Among other issues, both aides to Gore were concerned that Gore, who was raised in Washington but spent summers on a family farm in Tennessee, had overstated his farming background to appeal to voters in Iowa.
Chris Lehane, Gore's campaign spokesman, declined to address the 1987 and 1988 memos, saying he was not aware of them. But he said that Gore's statement in Wednesday's debate that he has always favored abortion rights is correct, and that his House votes against using tax dollars to support abortion are consistent with his pro-choice position. He noted that Gore acknowledged, during the debate, that he once opposed public funding for abortions.
Lehane, however, declined to answer a question about whether Gore agreed with the language in the 1984 amendment; or the 1977 measure, the so-called Hyde amendment, that said abortion is the taking of a life and is not protected by the Constitution.
Gore, who once had a high rating from the antiabortion movement, condemned abortion in his own words in a letter to a constituent in 1987, according to a 1999 biography, ''Gore: A Political Life,'' by former ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick.
In the letter, according to Zelnick's book, Gore wrote, ''During my 11 years in Congress, I have consistently opposed federal funding of abortions. In my opinion, it is wrong to spend federal dollars for what is arguably the taking of human life.''
Yesterday, Lehane challenged a reporter's reference to Gore's claim last March to have invented the Internet. Gore, Lehane said, never said such a thing. Later, when he was read Gore's quote - ''I took the initiative in creating the Internet'' - Lehane noted Gore had apologized for the misstatement in a debate in December.
For Gore, the debate Wednesday started on an adversarial note when co-moderator Judy Woodruff of CNN began a question to Gore by noting that ''your critics, including some Democrats, say that you will do almost anything to win,'' and that ''newspaper editorials here in New Hampshire and around the country accuse you of distorting Mr. Bradley's record.''
Gore took issue with her. But Bradley then spent much of the debate accusing Gore of being dishonest. ''Why should we believe that you will tell the truth as president if you don't tell the truth as a candidate?'' Bradley asked his rival.
The issues raised by the Bradley campaign illustrate the fine line that candidates - including Bradley, Gore has countered - often tread when characterizing their opponents' records.
Gore, for instance, said this on Wednesday: ''I didn't wait until I ran for president to first speak up on campaign-finance reform.'' False, said the Bradley campaign, pointing to legislation on the issue that Bradley sponsored or cosponsored between 1986 and 1996.
Lehane, asked whether Gore stood by the clear implication that Bradley had not taken any public stance on the issue until this campaign, said, ''The vice president was saying that he did not play a leadership role.''
In the debate's aftermath, Gore found himself closely questioned on his abortion position on a morning call-in show on New Hampshire Public Radio. The first caller, a woman who said she watched the debate, declared, ''I understand if you've changed your position during your career. I'm just having a hard ... I don't know how I can support your candidacy if you're dishonest about such an important subject, and especially on national television.''
Gore reassured the woman, saying he had always supported Roe v. Wade, though he noted that ''sometimes early in my career I voted to restrict federal funding of abortions.'' Nonetheless, he said, ''I've always supported Roe v. Wade. I've always supported keeping abortions legal....''
The caller told the moderator that she was satisfied with Gore's response.
More puzzling than Gore's metamorphosis on abortion, even to biographer Zelnick, has been the vice president's tendency to add details to his resume that are unwarranted.
''My soft conclusion is that, where there are actual accomplishments, as good as they were, that if he could embellish them in furtherance of his psychic needs, then he did so,'' Zelnick said in an interview last week. The author, who now teaches at Boston University, writes in his book about the younger Gore's need to meet the demanding expectations of his father, the late senator Albert Gore Sr.
