USTIN, Texas - The race was close, his record was under attack, and he was up against an incumbent with a reputation as an excellent debater.
Yet George W. Bush more than held his own in 1994 during his only debate against Texas Governor Ann Richards, the silver-tongued orator who lambasted Bush's father in her speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
Two weeks after that debate, the former oil businessman and baseball team owner prevailed and was elected leader of the nation's second-most-populous state.
Today, Bush is in a familiar position: He is running for the highest office in the land against Vice President Al Gore, considered one of the Democrats' best debaters. Public opinion polls show an even race as the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the general election campaign nears. The two campaigns are haggling over the number and format for debates, with each side knowing that these widely viewed meetings may tip the scales on Election Day.
While verbal gaffes and his less than a term-and-a-half in elective office have raised doubts about Bush's debating skills, a look back at his 1994 face-off with Richards shows he was able to effectively fend off criticism of his record and present himself as an agent of change in the impending election.
Voters who tuned into public television and radio stations broadcasting the Oct. 21, 1994, debate heard many of the lines that Bush uses today on the stump.
''Listen, if Texans are happy with the status quo, if Texans want someone who has spent her entire public life in politics, they should not vote for me,'' Bush said then. It presaged his current take-me-or-leave-me statements as Bush pitches himself as an outsider against Gore, who has spent most of his life in Washington.
When Richards attacked Bush's business record, as Gore does today in criticizing his gubernatorial results, Bush retorted as he does with the vice president. He accused the then-governor of negative campaigning.
He said Richards was trying to ''smear my business record'' as a ''diversion away from talking about the issues facing Texas such as education, welfare reform, and juvenile justice reform.'' It was, he said then as he does now, ''just old-style politics.''
Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas, said, ''The dominant impression I have of that debate was Ann going after him with sarcasm and humor and Bush managed to stay cool and not rattled by any of her efforts to do those things.''
Wayne Slater, a political reporter for The Dallas Morning News and one of the debate panelists, recalls: ''The expectations were low and he met them. He answered the questions, he did well, he seemed very respectful of Ann Richards.''
Today, the dynamic is much the same, so much so that Bush campaign spokeswoman Karen Hughes said last week that Gore may have already been ''out-negotiated'' in the debate process.
Confident in his skills as a debater, the vice president had no sooner secured the Democratic presidential nomination than he e-mailed Bush and offered to drop all TV advertising in favor of twice-weekly debates. He also accepted the three commission debates and all others offered him, now totaling 42.
Bush has yet to agree to any, including the proposed debate Oct. 3 at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, seeking leverage in the negotiations. But the impression that Gore will excel and Bush may falter has left the vice president with high expectations and Bush with decidedly low ones.
''He's up against someone who's supposed to knock him out of the park, so if he just keeps from drooling on his tie or visibly shaking, he should come out of it OK,'' Buchanan said.
Those who watched in 1994 remember that Richards, unlike Gore, was not overly eager to debate. The campaigns ended up settling on one meeting, on a Friday night, a time when most Texans are not in front of their TVs but in the stands for their local high school football game.
The debate was held at the Loews Anatole Hotel in Dallas, immediately after one between US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and her Democratic challenger, Richard Fischer.
The debate had a town hall format, with a panel of 21 citizens asking questions and four reporters asking followups.
Richards used part of her opening statement to ask voters to pray for the victims of recent floods around Houston. Immediately, Bush disarmed her by declaring, ''Well-spoken, governor.''
Richards then spoke of her top priority, education. Bush said he wanted a ''change of culture'' so that Texans were held accountable for their actions, much as he says today of his goal for the nation.
The core of Richards's argument, however, was that Bush was not experienced enough to run the state. Richards, 61, had served as a county commissioner and state treasurer before being elected governor in 1990. Bush, 48, had lost his only bid for elective office, a run for Congress in west Texas in 1978.
''This is really serious,'' Richards said. ''This is not a joke. We're talking about who is going to run the state of Texas. You have got to have had some experience in the public sector before you get the chief executive's job.''
Bush suggested his lack of experience was an asset, since he would not be ''constrained by the current way of doing things in Austin.''
Richards also attacked Bush's business record, saying that the five companies he had run or served on the board of had lost a combined $371 million.
Bush disputed her analysis, said he was proud of his record, and cited his work as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers.
In a line of questioning that is expected to be echoed this fall, a reporter asked Bush about his enlistment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and whether he used the influence of his father, a congressman from Houston at the time, to avoid more dangerous duty.
Bush, who flew a fighter jet, bristled at the suggestion.
''Putting an F-102 jet in afterburner in a single-seat, single-engine aircraft was a thrill, but it also wasn't trying to avoid duty. Had that engine failed, I could have been killed, so I was at risk.''
While Bush went on to win the election, those who watched him in 1994 remember a far worse debate performance in 1998 and say it, too, offers an important lesson to those who will watch this year's debate.
The incumbent governor, squaring off against Democrat Garry Mauro in El Paso, appeared uptight, despite having a strong lead in the polls. ''All he was doing was trying to play defense,'' said Paul Burka, executive editor of Texas Monthly and the magazine's chief political writer.
He recalls Bush being asked about funding for the University of Texas at El Paso and replying that the solution was to take it out of the ''PUF,'' the Permanent University Fund, and put it into the ''HEAF,'' the Higher Education Assistance Fund. Burka and others felt it was the kind of bureaucratic answer for which he would have skewered Richards four years earlier.
''There's a big difference between when he thinks he is winning the race as opposed to being in the fight of his life,'' Burka said.
''I don't know how he's going to be under those circumstances, with everything on the line and going against someone thought to be a good debater. I think it's just an open question of whether Bush will rise to the occasion.''
